blog 7

From the current reading it is very apparent that materiality is something that is very important to Hayles. She discusses the importance of materiality in pretty much every chapter of her book Writing Machines. All this talk of how important this concept is culminates in chapters five through seven where Hayles discusses Artist Books. Artist books use the medium of the book and in most cases the materiality of the book.
I was very interested in these chapters I have had several opportunities to explore and even create artist books in a few classes that I have taken. I have also seen many artist books at the artist book collection on the fourth floor of the library. This was a topic that I found I could relate to and understand much more than previous chapters of the book. Artist books rely heavily on the materiality of the book. From the examples that Hayles wrote about and the books that I have seen many of them can be sculptural in there making and rely on the way the book is made and put together. from the covers to the pages and layout of the letters everything has meaning and creates a message. Using this idea with hypertext makes the reader think about not only what he is reading but how what he is reading was made and why. Also you have to think about what you are reading from whether you are reading on a laptop or a desktop or a projected screen all these can change the way a hypertext is read and interacted with.
I think that materiality is very important for reading or interacting with any literature. All the different ways a book can be put together using different fonts and different sentence structures can all be very important to the themes and meaning of the literature. If the book is old and worn it can carry meaning to a certain person who may have fond memories about the book. The old sayings don’t judge a book by its cover comes to mind. Maybe it is time to judge a book or any literature by its cover rather than just the words inside it.