The Bread Book

Bread wrapped in paper Sliced bread bound by string Sliced bread

The Bread Book
2019

Postdigital Bookwork





The Bread Book is a book made from flour, salt, water, tracing paper, baked into a loaf of white sourdough bread.
It began from a series of online exchanges and recipes shared across digital communities, and became an attempt at embodying the post digital experiences, through bread. The text of the book includes an email chain passed between new bakers of recipes and links, as well as screenshots of messages about organising picking up a sourdough starter.


The text is treated as another ingredient, fed into the bread at different stages to ferment alongside the flour and water.
This evokes the question- how does text ferment and age over time? 

Assuming it is not eaten- The Bread Book is then left to grow mouldy. If eaten the book will still transform, however, aided by the enzymes of the human digestive system. 

Just like standard codex books The Bread Book develops with time and context, reacting to environmental, and methodological changes. The Bread Book is a conceptual interpretation of codex books that prompts the reader to look at how 
we interpret text.


Tying together the work of artists such as Dieter Rot and Lexie Smith, The Bread Book looks at physical and digital cultures and their life span, birthing the idea of human and non-human agencies working in unison and relying on each others support for survival.