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Agrippa (A Book of the Dead)
Encyclopedia
Agrippa is a work of art created by speculative fiction novelist William Gibson
, artist Dennis Ashbaugh
and publisher Kevin Begos Jr. in 1992. The work consists of a 300-line semi-autobiographical electronic poem by Gibson, embedded in an artist's book by Ashbaugh. Gibson's text focused on the ethereal nature of memories (the title is taken from a photo album). Its principal notoriety arose from the fact that the poem, stored on a 3.5" floppy disk
, was programmed to erase itself after a single use; similarly, the pages of the artist's book were treated with photosensitive chemicals, effecting the gradual fading of the words and images from the book's first exposure to light.
of the art world, who suggested to abstract painter Dennis Ashbaugh
that they "put out an art book on computer that vanishes". Ashbaugh—who despite his "heavy art-world resume" was bored with the abstract impressionist
paintings he was doing—took the suggestion seriously, and developed it further.
A few years beforehand, Ashbaugh had written a fan letter to cyberpunk
novelist William Gibson
, whose oeuvre he had admired, and the pair had struck up a telephone friendship. Shortly after the project had germinated in the minds of Begos Jr. and Ashbaugh, they contacted and recruited Gibson. The project exemplified Gibson's deep ambivalence towards technologically advanced futurity, and as The New York Times
expressed it, was "designed to challenge conventional notions about books and art while extracting money from collectors of both".
The project manifested as a poem written by Gibson incorporated into an artist's book created by Ashbaugh; as such it was as much a work of collaborative conceptual art
as poetry. Gibson stated that Ashbaugh's design "eventually included a supposedly self-devouring
floppy-disk intended to display the text only once, then eat itself." Ashbaugh was gleeful at the dilemma this would pose to librarian
s: in order to register the copyright of the book, he had to send two copies to the United States
Library of Congress
, who, in order to classify it had to read it, and in the process, necessarily had to destroy it. The creators had initially intended to infect the disks with a computer virus
, but declined to after considering the potential damage to the computer systems of innocents.
, an art space in Greenwich Village
, New York City
. The performance—known as "The Transmission"—consisted of the public incomplete reading of the poem by illusionist Penn Jillette
, recorded and simultaneously transmitted to several other cities. The poem was inscribed on a sculptural magnetic disk which had been vacuum-sealed until the event's commencement, and was programmed to erase itself upon exposure to air. Contrary to numerous colourful reports, neither this disk nor the diskettes embedded in the artist's book were ever actually hacked
in any strict sense.
Academic researcher Matthew Kirschenbaum has reported that a pirated text of the poem was released the next day on MindVox
, "an edgy New York City-based electronic bulletin board". Kirschenbaum considers Mindvox, an interface between the darknet
and the global Internet
, to have been "an ideal initial host". The text spread rapidly from that point on, first on FTP servers and anonymous mailers and later via USENET
and listserv
email. Since Gibson did not use email at the time, fans sent copies of the pirated text to his fax machine.
The precise manner in which the text was obtained for MindVox is unclear, although the initial custodian of the text, known only as "Templar" attached to it an introductory note in which he claimed credit. Begos claimed that a troupe of New York University
students representing themselves as documentarians attended The Transmission and made a videotape
recording of the screen as it displayed the text as an accompaniment of Jillette's reading. Kirschenbaum speculates that this group included the offline persona of Templar or one of his associates. According to this account, ostensibly endorsed by Templar in a post to Slashdot
in February 2000, the students then transcribed the poem from the tape and within hours had uploaded it to MindVox. However, according to a dissenting account by hacktivist and MindVox co-founder Patrick K. Kroupa
, subterfuge prior to The Transmission elicited a betrayal of trust which yielded the uploaders the text. Kirschenbaum declined to elaborate on the specifics of the Kroupa conjecture, which he declared himself "not at liberty to disclose".
On December 9, 2008 (the sixteenth anniversary of the original Transmission), the Agrippa Files, working with a scholarly team at the University of Maryland
, released an emulated run of the entire poem (derived from an original diskette loaned by a collector) and an hour's worth of "bootleg" footage shot covertly at the Americas Society (the source of the text that was posted on MindVox
).
—Deluxe and Small—by Kevin Begos Jr. Publishing, New York City
. The deluxe edition came in a 16 by 21½-inch (41 cm × 55 cm) metal mesh case sheathed in Kevlar
(a polymer used to make bulletproof vests) and designed to look like a buried relic. Inside is a book of 93 ragged and charred
pages sewn by hand and bound in stained and singed linen by Karl Foulkes; the book gives the impression of having survived a fire; it was described by Peter Schwenger as "a black box
recovered from some unspecified disaster." The edition includes pages of DNA sequence
s set in double columns of 42 lines each like the Gutenberg Bible
, and copperplate aquatint etching
s by Ashbaugh editioned by Peter Pettingill on Fabriano Tiepolo paper. The monochromatic etchings depict stylised chromosomes, a hallmark of Ashbaugh's work, accompanied by imagery of a pistol
, camera
or in some instances simple line drawings—all allusions to Gibson's contribution.
The deluxe edition was set in Monotype Gill Sans
at Golgonooza Letter Foundry, and printed on Rives heavyweight text by Begos Jr. and the Sun Hill Press. The final 60 pages of the book were then fused together, with a hollowed-out section cut into the centre, containing the self-erasing diskette on which the text of Gibson's poem was encrypted. The encryption was the work of a pseudonymous computer programmer, "BRASH", assisted by Electronic Frontier Foundation
founders John Perry Barlow
and John Gilmore. The deluxe edition was originally priced at US$
1500 (later $2000), and each copy is unique to some degree because of handmade or hand-finished elements.
The small edition was sold for $450; like the deluxe edition, it was set in Monotype Gill Sans
, but in single columns. It was printed on Mohawk Superfine text by the Sun Hill Press, with the reproduction of the etchings printed on a Canon laser printer
. The edition was then Smythe sewn at Spectrum Bindery and enclosed in a solander box
. A bronze-boxed collectors' copy was also released, and retailed at $7,500.
Fewer than 95 deluxe editions of Agrippa are extant, although the exact number is unknown and is the source of considerable mystery. The Victoria and Albert Museum
possesses a deluxe edition, numbered 4 of 10. A publicly accessible copy of the deluxe edition is available at the Rare Books Division of the New York Public Library
and a small copy resides at Western Michigan University
in Kalamazoo, Michigan
, while the Frances Mulhall Achilles Library at the Whitney Museum of American Art
in New York City
hosts a promotional prospectus. The book was exhibited in the 2003-2004 exhibition Ninety from the Nineties
at the New York Public Library. Gibson at one point claimed never to have seen a copy of the printed book, spurring speculation that no copies had actually been made. Many copies have since been documented, and Gibson's signature was noted on the copy held by the New York Public Library.
The construction of the book and the subject matter of the poem within it share a metaphorical connection in the decay of memory. In this light, critic Peter Schwenger asserts that Agrippa can be understood as organized by two ideas: the death of Gibson's father, and the disappearance or absence of the book itself. In this sense, it instantiates the ephemeral nature of all text.
In its original form, the text of the poem was supposed to fade from the page and, in Gibson's own words, "eat itself" off of the diskette enclosed with the book. The reader would, then, be left with only the memory of the text, much like the speaker is left with only the memory of his home town and his family after moving to Canada
from South Carolina
, in the course of the poem (as Gibson himself did during the Vietnam War
).
of "the mechanism", described as "Forever / Dividing that from this", and which can take the form of the camera or of the ancient gun that misfires in the speaker's hands. Technology, "the mechanism", is the agent of memory, which transforms subjective experience into allegedly objective records (photography). It is also the agent of life and death, one moment dispensing lethal bullets, but also likened to the life-giving qualities of sex
. Shooting the gun is "[l]ike the first time you put your mouth / on a woman".
The poem is, then, not merely about memory, but how memories are formed from subjective experience, and how those memories compare to mechanically-reproduced recordings. In the poem, "the mechanism" is strongly associated with recording
, which can replace subjective experience
. Insomuch as memories constitute our identities
, "the mechanism" thus represents the destruction of the self
via recordings. Hence both cameras, as devices of recording, and guns, as instruments of destruction, are part of the same mechanism—dividing that (memory, identity, life) from this (recordings, anonymity, death).
for the artistic community to appreciate the potential of electronic media—for the extent to which it entered public consciousness. It caused a fierce controversy in the art world, among museums and among libraries. It challenged established notions of permanence of art and literature, and, as Ashbaugh intended, raised significant problems for archivists seeking to preserve it for the benefit of future generations.
Agrippa was particularly well-received by critics, with digital media
theorist Peter Lunenfeld
describing it in 2001 as "one of the most evocative hypertexts published in the 1990s". Professor of English literature
John Johnson has claimed that the importance of Agrippa stems not only from its "foregrounding of mediality in an assemblage of texts", but also from the fact that "media in this work are explicitly as passageways to the realm of the dead". The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century English Literature, which described the poem as "a mournful text", praised Agrippas inventive use of digital format. However, academic Joseph Tabbi remarked in a 2008 paper that Agrippa was among those works that are "canonized before they have been read, resisted, and reconsidered among fellow authors within an institutional environment that persists in time and finds outlets in many media".
In a lecture at the exhibition of Agrippa at the Center for Book Arts
in New York City, semiotician Marshall Blonsky of New York University
drew an allusion between the project and the work of two French literary figures—philosopher Maurice Blanchot
(author of "The Absence of the Book
"), and poet Stéphane Mallarmé
, a 19th-century forerunner of semiotics
and deconstruction
. In response to Blonsky's analysis that "[t]he collaborators in Agrippa are responding to a historical condition of language, a modern skepticism about it", Gibson disparagingly commented "Honest to God, these academics who think it's all some sort of big-time French philosophy—that's a scam. Those guys worship Jerry Lewis
, they get our pop culture all wrong."
William Gibson
William Gibson is an American-Canadian science fiction author.William Gibson may also refer to:-Association football:*Will Gibson , Scottish footballer...
, artist Dennis Ashbaugh
Dennis Ashbaugh
Dennis John Ashbaugh is an American painter and artist from New York. He is one of the first artists to employ DNA marking patterns in paintings, in his 1992 work Designer Gene. Ashbaugh's use of light and colour in his large-scale paintings of autoradiographs have drawn comparison with Mark Rothko...
and publisher Kevin Begos Jr. in 1992. The work consists of a 300-line semi-autobiographical electronic poem by Gibson, embedded in an artist's book by Ashbaugh. Gibson's text focused on the ethereal nature of memories (the title is taken from a photo album). Its principal notoriety arose from the fact that the poem, stored on a 3.5" floppy disk
Floppy disk
A floppy disk is a disk storage medium composed of a disk of thin and flexible magnetic storage medium, sealed in a rectangular plastic carrier lined with fabric that removes dust particles...
, was programmed to erase itself after a single use; similarly, the pages of the artist's book were treated with photosensitive chemicals, effecting the gradual fading of the words and images from the book's first exposure to light.
Origin and concept
The impetus for the initiation of the project was Kevin Begos Jr., a publisher of museum-quality manuscripts motivated by disregard for the commercialismCommercialism
Commercialism, in its original meaning, is the practices, methods, aims, and spirit of commerce or business. Today, however, it primarily refers to the tendency within open-market capitalism to turn everything into objects, images, and services sold for the purpose of generating profit...
of the art world, who suggested to abstract painter Dennis Ashbaugh
Dennis Ashbaugh
Dennis John Ashbaugh is an American painter and artist from New York. He is one of the first artists to employ DNA marking patterns in paintings, in his 1992 work Designer Gene. Ashbaugh's use of light and colour in his large-scale paintings of autoradiographs have drawn comparison with Mark Rothko...
that they "put out an art book on computer that vanishes". Ashbaugh—who despite his "heavy art-world resume" was bored with the abstract impressionist
Abstract impressionism
Abstract Impressionism is a type of abstract painting where small brushstrokes build and structure large paintings...
paintings he was doing—took the suggestion seriously, and developed it further.
A few years beforehand, Ashbaugh had written a fan letter to cyberpunk
Cyberpunk
Cyberpunk is a postmodern and science fiction genre noted for its focus on "high tech and low life." The name is a portmanteau of cybernetics and punk, and was originally coined by Bruce Bethke as the title of his short story "Cyberpunk," published in 1983...
novelist William Gibson
William Gibson
William Gibson is an American-Canadian science fiction author.William Gibson may also refer to:-Association football:*Will Gibson , Scottish footballer...
, whose oeuvre he had admired, and the pair had struck up a telephone friendship. Shortly after the project had germinated in the minds of Begos Jr. and Ashbaugh, they contacted and recruited Gibson. The project exemplified Gibson's deep ambivalence towards technologically advanced futurity, and as The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
expressed it, was "designed to challenge conventional notions about books and art while extracting money from collectors of both".
The project manifested as a poem written by Gibson incorporated into an artist's book created by Ashbaugh; as such it was as much a work of collaborative conceptual art
Conceptual art
Conceptual art is art in which the concept or idea involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. Many of the works, sometimes called installations, of the artist Sol LeWitt may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions...
as poetry. Gibson stated that Ashbaugh's design "eventually included a supposedly self-devouring
Self-destruct
A self-destruct is a mechanism which causes a device to destroy itself under a predefined set of circumstances.Self-destruct mechanisms are also found on devices and systems where malfunction could endanger large numbers of people...
floppy-disk intended to display the text only once, then eat itself." Ashbaugh was gleeful at the dilemma this would pose to librarian
Librarian
A librarian is an information professional trained in library and information science, which is the organization and management of information services or materials for those with information needs...
s: in order to register the copyright of the book, he had to send two copies to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
, who, in order to classify it had to read it, and in the process, necessarily had to destroy it. The creators had initially intended to infect the disks with a computer virus
Computer virus
A computer virus is a computer program that can replicate itself and spread from one computer to another. The term "virus" is also commonly but erroneously used to refer to other types of malware, including but not limited to adware and spyware programs that do not have the reproductive ability...
, but declined to after considering the potential damage to the computer systems of innocents.
Release and replication
The work was premiered on December 9, 1992 at The KitchenThe Kitchen
The Kitchen is a non-profit, multi-disciplinary art and performance space located at at 512 West 19th Street, between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City...
, an art space in Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village, , , , .in New York often simply called "the Village", is a largely residential neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City. A large majority of the district is home to upper middle class families...
, New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. The performance—known as "The Transmission"—consisted of the public incomplete reading of the poem by illusionist Penn Jillette
Penn Jillette
Penn Fraser Jillette is an American magician, comedian, illusionist, juggler, bassist and a best-selling author known for his work with fellow illusionist Teller in the team Penn & Teller, and advocacy of atheism, libertarian philosophy, free-market economics, and scientific skepticism.-Early...
, recorded and simultaneously transmitted to several other cities. The poem was inscribed on a sculptural magnetic disk which had been vacuum-sealed until the event's commencement, and was programmed to erase itself upon exposure to air. Contrary to numerous colourful reports, neither this disk nor the diskettes embedded in the artist's book were ever actually hacked
Hacker (computer security)
In computer security and everyday language, a hacker is someone who breaks into computers and computer networks. Hackers may be motivated by a multitude of reasons, including profit, protest, or because of the challenge...
in any strict sense.
Academic researcher Matthew Kirschenbaum has reported that a pirated text of the poem was released the next day on MindVox
MindVox
MindVox was a famed early Internet Service Provider in New York City. A controversial sometime media darling — the service was referred to as "the Hells Angels of Cyberspace" — it was founded in 1991 by Bruce Fancher and Patrick Kroupa , two former members of the legendary Legion of Doom hacker...
, "an edgy New York City-based electronic bulletin board". Kirschenbaum considers Mindvox, an interface between the darknet
Darknet
The term darknet refers to any private, distributed P2P filesharing network, where connections are made only between trusted peers using non-standard protocols and ports...
and the global Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
, to have been "an ideal initial host". The text spread rapidly from that point on, first on FTP servers and anonymous mailers and later via USENET
Usenet
Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...
and listserv
LISTSERV
LISTSERV was the first electronic mailing list software application, consisting of a set of email addresses for a group in which the sender can send one email and it will reach a variety of people...
email. Since Gibson did not use email at the time, fans sent copies of the pirated text to his fax machine.
The precise manner in which the text was obtained for MindVox is unclear, although the initial custodian of the text, known only as "Templar" attached to it an introductory note in which he claimed credit. Begos claimed that a troupe of New York University
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
students representing themselves as documentarians attended The Transmission and made a videotape
Videotape
A videotape is a recording of images and sounds on to magnetic tape as opposed to film stock or random access digital media. Videotapes are also used for storing scientific or medical data, such as the data produced by an electrocardiogram...
recording of the screen as it displayed the text as an accompaniment of Jillette's reading. Kirschenbaum speculates that this group included the offline persona of Templar or one of his associates. According to this account, ostensibly endorsed by Templar in a post to Slashdot
Slashdot
Slashdot is a technology-related news website owned by Geeknet, Inc. The site, which bills itself as "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters", features user-submitted and ‑evaluated current affairs news stories about science- and technology-related topics. Each story has a comments section...
in February 2000, the students then transcribed the poem from the tape and within hours had uploaded it to MindVox. However, according to a dissenting account by hacktivist and MindVox co-founder Patrick K. Kroupa
Patrick K. Kroupa
Patrick Karel Kroupa is an American writer, hacker and activist. Kroupa was a member of the legendary Legion of Doom hacker group and co-founded MindVox in 1991, with Bruce Fancher...
, subterfuge prior to The Transmission elicited a betrayal of trust which yielded the uploaders the text. Kirschenbaum declined to elaborate on the specifics of the Kroupa conjecture, which he declared himself "not at liberty to disclose".
On December 9, 2008 (the sixteenth anniversary of the original Transmission), the Agrippa Files, working with a scholarly team at the University of Maryland
University of Maryland, College Park
The University of Maryland, College Park is a top-ranked public research university located in the city of College Park in Prince George's County, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C...
, released an emulated run of the entire poem (derived from an original diskette loaned by a collector) and an hour's worth of "bootleg" footage shot covertly at the Americas Society (the source of the text that was posted on MindVox
MindVox
MindVox was a famed early Internet Service Provider in New York City. A controversial sometime media darling — the service was referred to as "the Hells Angels of Cyberspace" — it was founded in 1991 by Bruce Fancher and Patrick Kroupa , two former members of the legendary Legion of Doom hacker...
).
Content and editions
The book was published in 1992 in two limited editionsLimited edition books
A limited edition book is a description of a book which is released in a limited print run quantity, usually much smaller than publishing industry standards, and connotes a level of scarcity or exclusivity...
—Deluxe and Small—by Kevin Begos Jr. Publishing, New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. The deluxe edition came in a 16 by 21½-inch (41 cm × 55 cm) metal mesh case sheathed in Kevlar
Kevlar
Kevlar is the registered trademark for a para-aramid synthetic fiber, related to other aramids such as Nomex and Technora. Developed at DuPont in 1965, this high strength material was first commercially used in the early 1970s as a replacement for steel in racing tires...
(a polymer used to make bulletproof vests) and designed to look like a buried relic. Inside is a book of 93 ragged and charred
Charring
Charring is a chemical process of incomplete combustion of certain solids when subjected to high heat. The resulting residue matter is called Char. By the action of heat, charring removes hydrogen and oxygen from the solid, so that the remaining char is composed primarily of carbon...
pages sewn by hand and bound in stained and singed linen by Karl Foulkes; the book gives the impression of having survived a fire; it was described by Peter Schwenger as "a black box
Black box
A black box is a device, object, or system whose inner workings are unknown; only the input, transfer, and output are known characteristics.The term black box can also refer to:-In science and technology:*Black box theory, a philosophical theory...
recovered from some unspecified disaster." The edition includes pages of DNA sequence
DNA sequence
The sequence or primary structure of a nucleic acid is the composition of atoms that make up the nucleic acid and the chemical bonds that bond those atoms. Because nucleic acids, such as DNA and RNA, are unbranched polymers, this specification is equivalent to specifying the sequence of...
s set in double columns of 42 lines each like the Gutenberg Bible
Gutenberg Bible
The Gutenberg Bible was the first major book printed with a movable type printing press, and marked the start of the "Gutenberg Revolution" and the age of the printed book. Widely praised for its high aesthetic and artistic qualities, the book has an iconic status...
, and copperplate aquatint etching
Etching
Etching is the process of using strong acid or mordant to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal surface to create a design in intaglio in the metal...
s by Ashbaugh editioned by Peter Pettingill on Fabriano Tiepolo paper. The monochromatic etchings depict stylised chromosomes, a hallmark of Ashbaugh's work, accompanied by imagery of a pistol
Pistol
When distinguished as a subset of handguns, a pistol is a handgun with a chamber that is integral with the barrel, as opposed to a revolver, wherein the chamber is separate from the barrel as a revolving cylinder. Typically, pistols have an effective range of about 100 feet.-History:The pistol...
, camera
Camera
A camera is a device that records and stores images. These images may be still photographs or moving images such as videos or movies. The term camera comes from the camera obscura , an early mechanism for projecting images...
or in some instances simple line drawings—all allusions to Gibson's contribution.
The deluxe edition was set in Monotype Gill Sans
Gill Sans
Gill Sans is a sans-serif typeface designed by Eric Gill.The original design appeared in 1926 when Douglas Cleverdon opened a bookshop in his home town of Bristol, where Eric Gill painted the fascia over the window in sans-serif capitals that would later be known as Gill Sans...
at Golgonooza Letter Foundry, and printed on Rives heavyweight text by Begos Jr. and the Sun Hill Press. The final 60 pages of the book were then fused together, with a hollowed-out section cut into the centre, containing the self-erasing diskette on which the text of Gibson's poem was encrypted. The encryption was the work of a pseudonymous computer programmer, "BRASH", assisted by Electronic Frontier Foundation
Electronic Frontier Foundation
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is an international non-profit digital rights advocacy and legal organization based in the United States...
founders John Perry Barlow
John Perry Barlow
John Perry Barlow is an American poet and essayist, a retired Wyoming cattle rancher, and a cyberlibertarian political activist who has been associated with both the Democratic and Republican parties. He is also a former lyricist for the Grateful Dead and a founding member of the Electronic...
and John Gilmore. The deluxe edition was originally priced at US$
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
1500 (later $2000), and each copy is unique to some degree because of handmade or hand-finished elements.
The small edition was sold for $450; like the deluxe edition, it was set in Monotype Gill Sans
Gill Sans
Gill Sans is a sans-serif typeface designed by Eric Gill.The original design appeared in 1926 when Douglas Cleverdon opened a bookshop in his home town of Bristol, where Eric Gill painted the fascia over the window in sans-serif capitals that would later be known as Gill Sans...
, but in single columns. It was printed on Mohawk Superfine text by the Sun Hill Press, with the reproduction of the etchings printed on a Canon laser printer
Laser printer
A laser printer is a common type of computer printer that rapidly produces high quality text and graphics on plain paper. As with digital photocopiers and multifunction printers , laser printers employ a xerographic printing process, but differ from analog photocopiers in that the image is produced...
. The edition was then Smythe sewn at Spectrum Bindery and enclosed in a solander box
Solander box
A solander box or clamshell case , is a book-form case used for storing manuscripts, maps, prints, documents, old and precious books, etc. It is commonly used in archives, print rooms and libraries...
. A bronze-boxed collectors' copy was also released, and retailed at $7,500.
Fewer than 95 deluxe editions of Agrippa are extant, although the exact number is unknown and is the source of considerable mystery. The Victoria and Albert Museum
Victoria and Albert Museum
The Victoria and Albert Museum , set in the Brompton district of The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, England, is the world's largest museum of decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 4.5 million objects...
possesses a deluxe edition, numbered 4 of 10. A publicly accessible copy of the deluxe edition is available at the Rare Books Division of the New York Public Library
New York Public Library
The New York Public Library is the largest public library in North America and is one of the United States' most significant research libraries...
and a small copy resides at Western Michigan University
Western Michigan University
Western Michigan University is a public university located in Kalamazoo, Michigan, United States. The university was established in 1903 by Dwight B. Waldo, and as of the Fall 2010 semester, its enrollment is 25,045....
in Kalamazoo, Michigan
Kalamazoo, Michigan
The area on which the modern city stands was once home to Native Americans of the Hopewell culture, who migrated into the area sometime before the first millennium. Evidence of their early residency remains in the form of a small mound in downtown's Bronson Park. The Hopewell civilization began to...
, while the Frances Mulhall Achilles Library at the Whitney Museum of American Art
Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of...
in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
hosts a promotional prospectus. The book was exhibited in the 2003-2004 exhibition Ninety from the Nineties
Ninety from the Nineties
Ninety from the Nineties: A Decade of Printing was an exhibition held at the New York Public Library from November 7, 2003 through May 28, 2004....
at the New York Public Library. Gibson at one point claimed never to have seen a copy of the printed book, spurring speculation that no copies had actually been made. Many copies have since been documented, and Gibson's signature was noted on the copy held by the New York Public Library.
The poem
Theme and form
The poem is a detailed description of several objects, including a photo album and the camera that took the pictures in it, and is essentially about the nostalgia that the speaker, presumably Gibson himself, feels towards the details of his family's history: the painstaking descriptions of the houses they lived in, the cars they drove, and even their pets.In its original form, the text of the poem was supposed to fade from the page and, in Gibson's own words, "eat itself" off of the diskette enclosed with the book. The reader would, then, be left with only the memory of the text, much like the speaker is left with only the memory of his home town and his family after moving to Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
from South Carolina
South Carolina
South Carolina is a state in the Deep South of the United States that borders Georgia to the south, North Carolina to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Originally part of the Province of Carolina, the Province of South Carolina was one of the 13 colonies that declared independence...
, in the course of the poem (as Gibson himself did during the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
).
"The mechanism"
The poem contains a motifMotif (narrative)
In narrative, a motif is any recurring element that has symbolic significance in a story. Through its repetition, a motif can help produce other narrative aspects such as theme or mood....
of "the mechanism", described as "Forever / Dividing that from this", and which can take the form of the camera or of the ancient gun that misfires in the speaker's hands. Technology, "the mechanism", is the agent of memory, which transforms subjective experience into allegedly objective records (photography). It is also the agent of life and death, one moment dispensing lethal bullets, but also likened to the life-giving qualities of sex
Sex
In biology, sex is a process of combining and mixing genetic traits, often resulting in the specialization of organisms into a male or female variety . Sexual reproduction involves combining specialized cells to form offspring that inherit traits from both parents...
. Shooting the gun is "[l]ike the first time you put your mouth / on a woman".
The poem is, then, not merely about memory, but how memories are formed from subjective experience, and how those memories compare to mechanically-reproduced recordings. In the poem, "the mechanism" is strongly associated with recording
Recording
Recording is the process of capturing data or translating information to a recording format stored on some storage medium, which is often referred to as a record or, if an auditory medium, a recording....
, which can replace subjective experience
Qualia
Qualia , singular "quale" , from a Latin word meaning for "what sort" or "what kind," is a term used in philosophy to refer to subjective conscious experiences as 'raw feels'. Examples of qualia are the pain of a headache, the taste of wine, the experience of taking a recreational drug, or the...
. Insomuch as memories constitute our identities
Identity (social science)
Identity is a term used to describe a person's conception and expression of their individuality or group affiliations . The term is used more specifically in psychology and sociology, and is given a great deal of attention in social psychology...
, "the mechanism" thus represents the destruction of the self
Self (philosophy)
The philosophy of self defines the essential qualities that make one person distinct from all others. There have been numerous approaches to defining these qualities. The self is the idea of a unified being which is the source of consciousness. Moreover, this self is the agent responsible for the...
via recordings. Hence both cameras, as devices of recording, and guns, as instruments of destruction, are part of the same mechanism—dividing that (memory, identity, life) from this (recordings, anonymity, death).
Critical reception and influence
Agrippa was extremely influential—as a sigilSigil
Sigil may refer to:*Sigil , a type of symbol used in magic*Sigil , a symbol that must be attached to a variable name in some programming languages*A seal...
for the artistic community to appreciate the potential of electronic media—for the extent to which it entered public consciousness. It caused a fierce controversy in the art world, among museums and among libraries. It challenged established notions of permanence of art and literature, and, as Ashbaugh intended, raised significant problems for archivists seeking to preserve it for the benefit of future generations.
Agrippa was particularly well-received by critics, with digital media
Digital media
Digital media is a form of electronic media where data is stored in digital form. It can refer to the technical aspect of storage and transmission Digital media is a form of electronic media where data is stored in digital (as opposed to analog) form. It can refer to the technical aspect of...
theorist Peter Lunenfeld
Peter Lunenfeld
Peter Lunenfeld is a critic and theorist of digital media. He is a professor in the department at UCLA, director of the Institute for Technology and Aesthetics , and founder of mediawork: The Southern California New Media Group.Lunenfeld is a leading figure in digital aesthetic theory, set on...
describing it in 2001 as "one of the most evocative hypertexts published in the 1990s". Professor of English literature
English literature
English literature is the literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; for example, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Joseph Conrad was Polish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, J....
John Johnson has claimed that the importance of Agrippa stems not only from its "foregrounding of mediality in an assemblage of texts", but also from the fact that "media in this work are explicitly as passageways to the realm of the dead". The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century English Literature, which described the poem as "a mournful text", praised Agrippas inventive use of digital format. However, academic Joseph Tabbi remarked in a 2008 paper that Agrippa was among those works that are "canonized before they have been read, resisted, and reconsidered among fellow authors within an institutional environment that persists in time and finds outlets in many media".
In a lecture at the exhibition of Agrippa at the Center for Book Arts
Center for Book Arts
The Center for Book Arts in New York City is the first organization of its kind in the United States dedicated to contemporary interpretations of the book as an art object while preserving traditional practices of the art of the book....
in New York City, semiotician Marshall Blonsky of New York University
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
drew an allusion between the project and the work of two French literary figures—philosopher Maurice Blanchot
Maurice Blanchot
Maurice Blanchot was a French writer, philosopher, and literary theorist. His work had a strong influence on post-structuralist philosophers such as Jacques Derrida.-Works:...
(author of "The Absence of the Book
The Absence of the Book
"The Absence of the Book" is an essay by French philosopher and literary theorist Maurice Blanchot which appeared in his 1993 collection The Infinite Conversation....
"), and poet Stéphane Mallarmé
Stéphane Mallarmé
Stéphane Mallarmé , whose real name was Étienne Mallarmé, was a French poet and critic. He was a major French symbolist poet, and his work anticipated and inspired several revolutionary artistic schools of the early 20th century, such as Dadaism, Surrealism, and Futurism.-Biography:Stéphane...
, a 19th-century forerunner of semiotics
Semiotics
Semiotics, also called semiotic studies or semiology, is the study of signs and sign processes , indication, designation, likeness, analogy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, and communication...
and deconstruction
Deconstruction
Deconstruction is a term introduced by French philosopher Jacques Derrida in his 1967 book Of Grammatology. Although he carefully avoided defining the term directly, he sought to apply Martin Heidegger's concept of Destruktion or Abbau, to textual reading...
. In response to Blonsky's analysis that "[t]he collaborators in Agrippa are responding to a historical condition of language, a modern skepticism about it", Gibson disparagingly commented "Honest to God, these academics who think it's all some sort of big-time French philosophy—that's a scam. Those guys worship Jerry Lewis
Jerry Lewis
Jerry Lewis is an American comedian, actor, singer, film producer, screenwriter and film director. He is best known for his slapstick humor in film, television, stage and radio. He was originally paired up with Dean Martin in 1946, forming the famed comedy team of Martin and Lewis...
, they get our pop culture all wrong."
External links
- Agrippa (a book of the dead) at WilliamGibsonBooks.com
- The Agrippa Files – an online homage to, and archive of, the book's many forms by the University of California, Santa BarbaraUniversity of California, Santa BarbaraThe University of California, Santa Barbara, commonly known as UCSB or UC Santa Barbara, is a public research university and one of the 10 general campuses of the University of California system. The main campus is located on a site in Goleta, California, from Santa Barbara and northwest of Los...
English department - Gallery of Agrippa images from the William Gibson Aleph