The Articifer Arisen, The Articifer Fallen

By Joseph Lappie
Chicago, Illinois: Peptic Robot Press.2007: Edition of 25.
 
An ambitious project, full of typographical and literate wit and insight. Puns, both visual and word-based, abound. Even the nonsense makes sense. You have to be willing to play the game, but if you are, The Artificer… is engineered to provide much fun — and food for thought.
 
Joseph Lappie: "The Artificer Arisen, The Artificer Fallen aims to present the archetype of the engineer (or obsessive maker of mades) as a symbol for human potential and the failure to achieve that potential."
 
"I use the mythological figure of Daedalus, or more specifically the ideal of Daedalus, as the central character throughout the cyclical storyline. Formatted as a Dos-I-Do binding, one half of the book examines the ancient Greek engineer’s recurring habit of creating something fantastic only to have it cause personal tragedy. As time moves along things slowly become worse with larger ramifications. During the other half of the book a Daedalus-style person reappears in the twenty-first century and is immersed in a world where the desire to make things for the right reasons is the same as making them for the wrong ones. The quick ascension of the artificer leads directly to his inevitable and repeatable downfall. "
 
7 x 7"; 48 pages. Dos-a-dos construction. Handmade cotton/flax paper. Boards finished with beeswax and closed with twine string ties. Includes two pop-ups and four foldout pages. Typeface Minion Pro. Produced at the Columbia College of Chicago's Book & Paper Center.