Welcome to the newest addition to the BPIGS blog, a weekly suggested reading list of art-related printed matter all of which, for your convenience, can be found in Berlin! But first, who am I, and what are my qualifications for providing you with reading suggestions? Born and raised in California and educated in the fine arts and humanities in upstate New York, I moved to Berlin for a much-needed change of scenery. I am passionate about books (and print media in general) and dream of one day possessing the ultimate artist book collection. Until then, I will provide a weekly list of books on my wishlist.

The selections for this week address the relationship between the printed publication and the Internet, an obviously appropriate topic for a blog column about print.

I Read Where I Am: Exploring New Information Cultures(2011) is an accompaniment to the Infodecodata exhibition at the Graphic Design Museum. The essays by 82 artists, authors, curators, and designers address the issues surrounding the current production and consumption of information. The essays are concise, and each approach to the subject is unique, therefore in keeping with our decreasing attention spans and increasing information consumption skills. Given that new reading technologies allow us to highly customize our reading experiences, the collection is cleverly available in print (at Bücherbogen) and online (http://www.ireadwhereiam.com/), challenging the reader right from the start to take sides on the matter at hand: print or screen?

The seventh issue of the Swiss publication FAUND, In Your Face(2009) by GTU (http://iyf.tumblr.com/) is a collection of portraits found online. FAUND Magazine’s agenda as a print publication is to highlight the significance of internet-found images. This issue takes the form of a photo album of smiling middle-aged professionals removed from any context, which creates a gathering of portraits that is eerie but sweet at the same time. (available at Motto)

The Post-Internet Survival Guide 2010by Katja Novitskova (2011) seeks to provide the reader with a means of coping with the accelerating complexity of our daily relationship to the Internet. All of the material for the book has been selected from an ongoing Tumblr project (http://survivaltips.tumblr.com/), and in order to elevate the status of these online images and make them more concrete (and also to provide comfort, as it is a ‘survival guide’) the collection takes the form of a printed publication. Even though the Internet plays a vital role in the dissemination of information, traditional print media proves itself to be necessary to provide a filter of this information (for the sake of our sanity)! (available at Do You Read Me?!, ProQM, and Motto)