While we wait for our offices at Columbia, the Institute for the Future of the Book is conducting business in Bob Stein’s kitchen on the upper west side of Manhattan. Though our location affords almost limitless opportunities for cuisine, we have, for various reasons, limited our gustatory experience to three restaurants: Saigon Grill, Miyako Sushi, Pizza Perfecto. This limitation makes choosing what to have for lunch both easier and more difficult at the same time, as no one wants to be the one who cries sushi on a clearly Italian sort of day. So we were all glad when Alex arrived to settle the question. Saigon Grill.
Alex also treated us to a viewing of his latest work-in-progress, an electronic book/hybrid artwork entitled “Willoughby.” Alex uses electronic book technology (TK3, to be exact) to cast his black and white drawings as stage sets into which he embeds video clips of his performance. In the clips, he appears in elaborate make-up enacting bits of Willoughby’s tortured monologue (“I don’t want to die,” is Willoughby’s refrain). As Alex pages through the ebook, he casually narrates the story. This narration creates an engaging framework for the piece.
For a full-on Itin experience, you can download his electronic sketchbooks or visit the exhibitions section of our site for a description of his latest work-in-progress. Why are we so interested in his work? Bob, who has known Alex for some time, describes the progression, “When Alex started to bring his work as a painter into the electronic medium, an impulse to combine those images with sound, video, and narrative, quickly emerged and Alex went with it. It’s interesting to watch an artist follow these impulses to invent a new form of expression.”