Book on the myriad uses of the humble blue tarp, TOKYO BLUES

By at 10:10 am Thursday, Dec 3

Adam "Everyware" Greenfield writes,

Everywhere you go, there are certain things which play heroic roles in knitting the world together, and which somehow remain anonymous, even unseen. The first book from Do projects, Tokyo Blues, is the story of one of them: the common blue PVC plastic construction tarp.

Tokyo Blues is a photographic record of Nurri Kim's 2002-2003 investigation into this humble industrial material and the very wide variety of uses to which it's put in the everyday life of Japan.

From construction sites and homeless settlements to cherry-blossom viewing parties in the park, the ubiquitous blue tarp is a constant of Japanese life and a bearer of multiple registers of meaning. In sixty-four images from the boulevards, alleys, sidestreets and interstitial spaces, Tokyo Blues explores these dramatically different contexts, returning something "we see too often, and then forget to see" to full, vivid visibility. The result is a book that provokes its readers to see the city around them with new eyes - whether that city is Tokyo, or their own.

We thought you'd appreciate two things in particular about Tokyo Blues: firstly, that we released a free and freely downloadable PDF of the book simultaneously with its physical publication; and secondly, that the book in both of its forms is offered under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. Our philosophy is that you buy the book if you want the object, but the ideas within are and will remain free.

0901 Tokyo Blues. (Thanks, Adam!)

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Cory Doctorow

Upcoming appearances

* Feb 9, 2012, DeKalb, IL: Day of Doctorow, NIU
* Feb 10-12, 2012, Chicago, IL: Capricon 32
* Feb 13, 2012, Arlington, TX: UT Arlington College of Engineering Distinguished Speaker Series
* Feb 16, 2012, Victoria, BC: 13th Annual Privacy and Security Conference

Recent books:
* Context (essays)
* With a Little Help (short stories)
* For the Win (YA novel)
* Makers (adult novel)

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