The Codex

Codex: what a cool name for a book.

 It’s too bad the word didn’t stick for more contemporary forms of literature like the novel, but that’s because the word refers to a specific type of book; specifically manuscripts, which contain scripture or some kind of ancient writing. Even though the name is not commonly used, the codex-style bookbinding technique can still be seen everywhere.

How to make your own book, codex style.

Literally, I mean everywhere. In 2006, ArtStage, “a privately sponsored, public art exhibition” in Toronto, Canada, presented outdoor sculptures people could see on the way to a nearby airport.

Although The Book by Ilan Sandler’s size makes it easily seen from a distance, a closer look shows that there are shapes cut into the pages of the steel book sculpture.

The Book and its lost page

These shapes form clusters of words, which the artist refers to as “clustered texts [that] link the letters of the Latin alphabet to its predecessors, which include the Phoenician alphabet that emerged from Egyptian hieroglyphs...The future imprints of text on a page are dependent on their ancestral roots as well as the symbolic languages, codes, and alphabets that are evolving out of our contemporary society.”