New Work! Acts of Translations: David Allen
I will be traveling to Miami next week for the first Tropic Bound Artist Book Fair. In my suitcase (and on my table) will be some new work, including the newest installment in the Acts of Translation collaborative series. (You can also find new work and older work in my online shop.)
Acts of Translation: David Allen is the second in a series of collaborative books from Big Jump Press devoted to translation and communication. In this project, Allen describes his process for translating a natural ecological system, a tick population, into a predictive mathematical model. Text for this project was gathered, edited, and recombined by Sarah Bryant from a series of recorded interviews with Allen conducted in 2022. The aphorism “all models are wrong, but some are useful” is attributed to British statistician George E. P. Box.
Ticks collected by Allen in Vermont were imaged with a scanning electron microscope by Jody Smith in 2019 and inkjet printed in my studio using an Epson Surecolor p900. The code featured in this book is a section of IxPopDyMod: Ixodidae population dynamics model which was written in R by David Allen. Papers for this project include Red River doublesided Premium Matte and Colorplan. Text set in Arno, Myriad, and Monaco type was printed letterpress using polymer plates from Boxcar Press. This project was made possible by financial support and community building from the Collaborative Arts Research Initiative at The University of Alabama.
This book has been produced in an edition of 66, of which 26 copies are lettered a through z and bound individually. Upon the completion of the series, 40 copies will be numbered and bound alongside other collaborative components of the Acts of Translation project.
You can read about the first iteration of Acts of Translation, a collaboration with photographer Allison Grant, in my last post. Forthcoming in March (?): Acts of Translation:Ben Mitchell. Mitchell is a UK based type designer that you can learn more about here. Progress photos below!
2 comments on “New Work! Acts of Translations: David Allen”
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Big Jump Press 
This looks amazing. I was so sad for me (happy for you) that it has already sold out. As a (former) scientist I’m very interested in the collaboration you had with David and how that resulted in this book. As someone who has used the Red River double sided matte paper for a book project, I have mixed feelings about my experience with it and would have loved to see how you incorporated it into this book.
Hi Paul! It only sold out because I forgot how to use my online shop hahaha. If you are still interested in it, it is there. This is one of my first attempts to use Red River, and I too have mixed feelings, but overall I’m happy with it. I used it throughout for consistency. Anyhoo I hope all is well!