Production Narrative

by J.Drucker

The book was produced in InDesign on a Mac from text and image files and then printed on a laser printer, two sided, and then bound. The images had to be redrawn from the large (22 x 30") originals in order to be scanned. So they are almost identical to the originals, but not quite. The end sheets were produced using water color and scatter technique to artificially age and distress the papers. The hand-sewing and collating were done at Warren Lane, as was the printing, and the page corners were hand-trimmed.

Critical Analysis

by J.Drucker

Design Features

typographic: All type is agenda, small, delicate, clean, compact.

imagery: The imagery is all taken from the drawings, and except for pages 24 and 25, which show the graphical elements of the system, the images are on the plates in their separate slip case.

graphical: The layout is clean, meant to reference scientific journals and texts.

openings: Insignificant in any way, merely functional, designed to be clean.

turnings:

development:

sequence:

textual: The texts and images are related to each other, and the texts are multi-layered. A series of statements about the emotional, personal weather accompany each drawing and were made at the same time as the graphical notation of moods and events in the emotional atmosphere. But the gloss on those texts, in the footnotes, was added afterward, as a way to expand on the vocabulary. The text describes a replete and consistent system, but it is pretty far out there in its combination of abstraction and idiosyncratic particulars.

structure:

conceptual:

intratextual:

scultpural features:

temporal features:

other features:

Critical Discussion

Easily one of the strangest books in Drucker's ouevre, this book is dense with information and the details of its system. It purports to be a complete system for describing emotional weather, and even has a page that is a workbook sheet for a reader to try to chart their own subjective meteorological event. The tone is a combination of tongue-in-cheek, deadpan seriousness, and high, arch formalism in a quasi-absurd and yet completely serious mode. It is a pretty book, in part because it is so clean, and it does masquerade as an artifact from a scientific world.

Detailed Analysis

General Comments

[]

Subjective Meteorology

title note: Subtitle: Dynamics of Personal Weather [J.Drucker]

Agents

Johanna Drucker

type: initiating

role:
artist
author
binder

nationality:
born: US

location:

note: []

Johanna Drucker

type: initiating

role:
artist
author
binder

nationality:
born: US

location:

note: []

Publication Information

edition type: editioned

publisher: Druckwerk

place: Charlottesville, Virginia

edition size: 12 Copies

note: []

Measurements

horizontal: 5.5 inches closed

vertical: 8.5 inches closed

depth: .15 inches closed

Production Information

production means:
laser (AAT)

binding: other Sewn pamphlet.

substrate:
bookBlock: paper

media:

other materials:

Appearance

general description: A small, precious looking object that resembles a laboratory journal from a 19th century naturalist's kit, with green fake snake-skin covers, curved corners on the pages, and spattered endsheets. A group of plates are put into a little manilla envelope slipcase at the back of the book. This is more of a dummy for publication than a finished, finalized book, but it gives the general impression of what a larger edition would look like.

format: pamphlet (AAT)

cover: Cover is paper pressed to look like green snakeskin, on which a label is pasted. The effect is to make the book look like an antique laboratory journal. The inside of the covers has a spatter pattern made in watercolor.

color: no

devices: none

enclosures:
item:

Content

pagination: paginated 28 numbered pages.

numbered?: numbered

signed?: signed

Colophon

Exhibition Information

exhibition history:

reception history:

Related Documents

manuscript type: texts

location: other

note:

General Comments

[]