Digital Rare and Imaginary Libraries: Some Critical Approaches to Text-to-Image Books

Abstract

Abstract

As Montfort, Bertram, Whalen and others have shown, computer-generated works have a long history tracing back to texts considered the origin of the field of electronic literature. The transformation of computer-generated works of literature into print books also has a decades old history that encompasses dedicated presses, book series, and one-off individual titles. In most of these cases, however, the focus of creation and critique has been largely put on the production at the level of text. Much less attention has gone to the creation of synthetic “physical” books via text-to-image models. In an Ulises Carrión-like fashion, the work of two digital artists and poets, Sasha Stiles and Richard Carter, bring to the forefront the critical distinction of books as texts and books as objects within the debates of Gen A.I. Stiles’s project, Biblio-Tech (2023-2024), is an NFT library of synthetic rare books with most showing highly elaborate material qualities. In contrast, Carter’s These Books Do Not Exist (2025) is a collection of ordinary looking page spreads from art books and technical manuals published as a PDF. The presence of “imaginary” books—books that only exist within other books—is not rare in the history of literature. In electronic literature, similarly, the print book has been a common material metaphor used to navigate, organize, or visually adorn a work. In all these cases, however, the fictional books serve various functions within another work. In Stiles’ and Carter’s projects, the synthetic “physical” books are the work. In this presentation, I examine the visual poetics of these two projects. I query how the idea of the digital rare book is evoked via generative processes and either exploited as in Stiles’ project or downplayed as in Carter’s. Ultimately, I investigate how each artist approaches the liminality of a synthetic book existence and its affective allure and rejection.