As our digital world evolves paper books are disappearing and digital publishing is flourishing. My Gutenberg series of 3D-printed book-shaped sculptures investigates how that change is happening. Paper evolves to electrons. Books are a great way to share information and images. Now we are distributing that “content” in other forms. Just like how sound has been shared over the years using cylinders and discs, then tapes in cartridges and cassettes and on CDs and DVDs and iPods, all of which are becoming obsolete and unreadable.

Just in my short digital life I have stored images on 2 types of floppy discs, Syquest cartridges, Zip drives, DAT tapes, CDs and DVDs, on magnetic hard drives, solid state drives and now in the cloud. Most of those are now obsolete and unreadable. Would my beloved books ever become unreadable? How will information be distributed in the future and will that too become obsolete? Those questions inspired me to create my Gutenberg series of 3D-printed artist book sculptures. Each 3D printed sculpture contains information: a book or music or images that are sealed inside, inaccessible unless the sculpture is broken open. And the contents may still be unreadable because the technology may have become obsolete.

A selection from the Gutenberg series is on my website.