Brian Dettmer creates sculptures by carving into and subtracting material from old books and reference materials. He explores our relationship with information by recycling outdated textbooks, encyclopedias, and dictionaries into new artworks. Through his subtractive process, Dettmer reveals the underlying images and information within the books in novel ways and gives new life to obsolete printed materials.

2. To create new art, Brian Dettmer trashes old books.
The painter-turned-sculptor takes outdated reference
materials such as textbooks and encyclopedias, seals
them with varnish, then carves away at their pages
with a knife.
Dettmer explores our relationship with information.
He adds no colour or text; it’s all what he calls “a
subtractive sculptural process.” These are some of
the amazing results.

3. Two dictionaries are given new life in “Webster Two Point Oh”

4. Hundred year old encyclopedias recycled as art in
“Organized Knowledge in Story and Picture”

5. How to turn a book into a living
document
In “Absolute Authority”, Dettmer
shows a medical textbook from the
1930s.

6. In “New Books of Knowledge” Dettmer reveals geographic images to show
this encyclopedia as a landscape.

7. A neat way to reinvent an encyclopedia

8. Make your comments about the
following quotes from his talk.

9. “People think that now that we have digital
technology, the book is going to die.”

10. “I think one of the reasons people are
disturbed by destroying books, is that we
think about books as living things.”

11. “I think of my work as almost an archaeology.”

12. “Now that most of our personal and cultural
records are in digital form, it's really allowing
the book to become something new.”

13. After watching Brian Dettmer’s Ted Talk
get into pairs and decide which everyday
objects are on the verge of becoming
obsolete and could be turned into
something else. In what way?