In a world of tech-neck and paid engagement, one artist is fighting a losing battle for your (shrinking) attention span.
Working from his small apartment, he created a mini screenprinting // bookbinding studio where he makes Pocket Sized Books.
Conducted from his studio in San Francisco. The fog is rolling in around us as Radio France FIP plays gently in the background.
Only the essentials.
The full setup.
A few years ago I had really bad c*vid, I was binge watching Elementary, I'd been sick for a week by this point, falling asleep mid-episode. I heard Sherlock say "Strawdog Jed". He was reading the name of a made-up whiskey brand in the show, but my brain was fully cooked at that point.
All I could think of was, Starwdog Jed needs to be a pulp western novella !!
The full setup.
I retired from "art", but I still want to make things. I love good story-telling, and I love a good trope. Especially the western tropes.
Tall handsome cowboy enters a one-horse town, riding a horse with no name? Sign me up!
But I don't like contemporary western culture, it's too unnecessarily violent toward women. I've read a lot of good westerns, and I've read a lot of bad westerns. At the end of the day, I wanted more. So I started making my own.
I still honor the tropes, but I try and make them my own.
Yeah, I mean, it's cool to be connected and up-to-date with the latest in technology.
But also it's cool to be disconnected.
I live and work in San Francisco, you look around and it's all billboards for AI, driverless taxis, food delivery mopeds zipping around people staring down, glued to their phones.
I'm trying to create more moments away from screens. Away from tech.
"Read a book" should be the new "touch grass", but also, touch grass too.
I read a book by Pauline Oliveros, and understood her meaning of "Deep Listening" to be connected closely with my understanding of "mindfullness".
"Disconnection" is my contemporary take on it.
With today's tech, for some reason, everything has to be an app. You want to learn guitar? Here's a guitar tuner app. Check into your flight? App.
There's even apps for mindfullness.
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Tech turns everything icky. I'm still very much involved in the ick, I can't get away from the ick. But I can practice awareness, I can practice deep listening, and I can practice disconnecting. A true digital purge doesn't feel possible anymore, but moments of disconnection are possible, and cost nothing.
To create a moment where the you can simply sit and experience... that's the goal.
Every time I don't feel like reading anything, I pick up Louis. I've read and re-read his books multiple times, each time it feels like I re-discover his characters. The story and their plots feel so familiar, yet all the details are so richly different.
If you read a few of his books, you'll start to notice he reuses phrases like: I was so hungry my stomach was wondering if my throat had been cut.
In honor of Louis L'Amour, I use that line in Strawdog Jed.
Listen, I doubt anyone is still reading at this point. But if you are, hey! wassup. I wrote this whole thing myself.
If you interview yourself, no one can really say "no you didn't". Also if you host your own site, you can do whatever you want with it!
Free The Internet baby! Free The Web
To answer the question though, no it doesn't.
I make these books by hand, Coffee For Brickhouse was a limited run of 12.
The book is online because it's fun, and I think people will enjoy reading it.
Read it here.
Operating from a modified iKEA folding cabinet, Ricky Peters creates handmade books to share stories with friends and family.
His recent project, Pocket Sized Books, is as an invitation to explore more moments away from screentime. Designed to be picked up on daily commutes or in times of boredom, the books provide readers a place to relax, without worrying about the inevitable upsell.