Title: page

Specifications:
Page size: 102 x 295mm,
Media: 220gsm cream cartridge paper. Full Canadian wire-o-bound with black cartridge over hardback covers. 17 leaves with ink-jet photographic images hand pasted in position.

Steve Hines describes his bookwork:

On 6th February 2000 I purchased an electronic pager. The main reason behind this was so that I could be contacted, via 'a page message', anywhere and at anytime. The pager was a constant link. It is strange that one can have so much faith in such a small technological device.

I thought of these particular 'paged messages' as notes or letters received from someone special. I would not have thrown away hand written notes or letters received from her, so I decided the only way to 'save' them was to reproduce them using computer technology & software.

Aside from personal inspirations for making this work I became interested in the relationship between a traditional form of communication such as a letter or a book and an electronic instrument such as the pager. Both methods communicate a message through a page of text, literally speaking. The message received on an electronic pager comes in the form of text, which I have then reproduced electronically, via a computer, so that it can, finally, be viewed in the traditional sense of a book. Through this process a loop or circle of communication is created – telephone - human voice – paged message – computer reproduction – traditional printed page – reader.

Instead of writing a letter or speaking on the telephone the communication is expanded immediately a pager or page is used. When sending a message via a pager the sender relays their message to an operator, who then relays it to the intended receiver. Obviously a page in a book can be read by either the owner of that book and anyone the book is passed onto. If there is more than one copy of a book then the number of readers is unidentifiable.
©steve hines 2005