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Cryptotexts

  • Introduction – Cryptotexts
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    Featuring a list of resources that includes the Beinecke Library's Voynich manuscript pages.

  • On the Codex Seraphinianus
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    "Abiding by the Cartesian dictate that even the most fabulous inventions are mixtures of known things in the world, Serafini's innovations are hybridizations of actual botanical, zoological, mechanical, and human elements sewn together in a fantastic weave of rainbow-hued creativity." (Features a selection of images from Luigi Serafini's Codex Seraphinianus.)

  • Codex Seraphinianus: Hallucinatory Encyclopedia
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    "What we would get from a decoded Codex would be nothing more than the pleasure of "getting it" -- that is, cracking a code. If you are a cryptographer, that pleasure will top all others. But ... there is also a pleasure in not getting it. As long as the Codex is not pinned down ... it offers itself as an endless source of speculation about its nature vis-à-vis more orthodox encyclopedias, more familiar worlds."

  • Timothy Ely
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    "Blending his own brand of asemic 'cribriform' writing with illustrations and decadent, tactile elements, [Ely's work reads] like engineering texts from a distant exoplanet (or some other Myst-like civilization that has created advanced technology from minimally-synthesized, human-scale elements)."

  • Michael Jacobson Interview
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    "I start my novels at the semantic beach, where meaningful and meaningless language converge. I'm particularly interested in exploring the moment when a simple line on a page begins to have meaning, when the content of a gesture is sufficient to scream, 'I exist!'"