Imaginary Concerts
VOLUME ONE

Imaginary Concerts is a collaborative project organized by Coffin, featuring the contributions of more than 75 artists, curators, and musicians. At the artist’s invitation, each contributor submitted a fictitious concert line-up they’d like to one day see take place, regardless of how unrealistic or unrealizable. The billings were given to designer Adam Turnbull, who typeset the texts in the house style of the Colby Poster Printing Co., the LA-based print shop which famously churned out [...]
 
Published with Anthology Editions.    

About Color

About Color is a book that features reproductions of artwork and text by Peter Coffin on the subject of color phenomena. Reproductions of artwork support specific concepts concerning the science, the culture and the psychology of color. This book answers questions for the curious and inquisitive reader ages 5 and up. Why and how do rainbows form the way they do? What is color synesthesia? Why plants are green? Why is the sky is blue? Why is honey yellow? What would sunsets on other planets look like if we could see them there? Why does color light mix differently than color paint? [...]




Here is a Hand

Here is a Hand is a book about the persistence of the disembodied hand in art. The “hand of the artist” metaphor for authorship and gesture suggests that the hand has autonomy and an ability to express itself. The disembodied hand is a culturally persistent metaphor for the subconscious, supporting the notion of a separation between the body’s hand and the mind. It gives the hand an aura of a magical self-embodied and conscious autonomy recurring in popular culture and as a useful heuristic for [...]






Another Alphabet

Another Alphabet is an art book showcasing hundreds of modern and contemporary artworks that feature letters of the alphabet. The book presents artworks alphabetically and interspersed with excerpts of texts form art historians, poets, philosophers and artists that concern the significance of letters in art. Artists represented include Danh Vo, Paulina Olowska, Ed Ruscha & [...]




Imaginary Concerts
VOLUME TWO


Imaginary Concerts is a collaborative project organized by Coffin, featuring the contributions of more than 75 artists, curators, and musicians. At the artist’s invitation, each contributor submitted a fictitious concert line-up they’d like to one day see take place, regardless of how unrealistic or unrealizable. The billings were given to designer Adam Turnbull, who typeset the texts in the house style of the Colby Poster Printing Co., the LA-based print shop which famously churned out [...]
Published with Anthology Editions.



pp.

pp. is an illustrated art book featuring reproductions of a photo series by Peter Coffin with an essay by Abraham Orden. The subject of the photos are the images in the pages of books and magazines juxtaposed with one another. The images are on a 1:1 scale with the originals that were photographed on a copy stand, in the tradition of conceptual photography employed to exclude expressivity from the act of reproduction. [...]

Sculpture Silhouettes

Sculpture Silhouettes is an illustrated catalog of a sculpture series by artist Peter Coffin. The large metal sculptures represent iconic three dimensional artworks in silhouette form that appear to slip in and out of view where they exist as viewers move among them. In transforming famous works of art into flattened silhouettes devoid of their original volume, Coffin engages the viewer to reflect and expand [...]

Imprints

This book includes reproductions of a photo series documenting Silly Putty™ that has been pressed onto the images of iconic artworks in order to reproduce them. The material used to copy the image and the image’s reversal combine organic and photomechanical qualities that are similar to the way in which analog photography records images and the way the human retina records an image prior to transmitting it to the brain. The series invites  [...]

 Grow Your Own

This book is about micronations, concept nation-states, and independent sovereign state movements from around the world. These entities have been created by artists such as Joseph Beuys and Jean Claude and Christo, musicians such as Fela Kuti, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, political dissidents, utopians, activists and individuals with an imagination.  

 A Rose is a Rose

This is a lexicon-style book featuring biographies and reproductions of visual art by over 130 modern and contemporary pseudonymous artists.

             

Plant Book

Plant Book, is an illustrated book containing reproductions of contemporary photography, performance art, drawing, painting and sculpture related to the life of plants and accompanied by three volumes of music composed by contemporary musicians for plants. The book features reproductions of artwork of over 150 visual artists, including John Baldessari, Uta Barth, Mark Dion, Andy Warhol, Tacita Dean, and Jeff Koons.  [...]



                  


Music for Plants, Volume 1

A music compilation including contributions from Mice Parade, Tetsu Inoue & seed(), No Neck Blues Band, Languis, HiM, Syntony, Deaken and Geologist / Animal Collective, Ariel Pink, Delia R. Gonzales & Gavin R. Russom, Sunburned Hand of the Man, Ara Peterson, Hiroshi Sunairi, & Hideyuki Mari, Fugu, Tony Goddess, Z's, Anthony Burdin Anthony Burdin, Weise & Koh (John Weise, Tim Koh, This Invitation, Kenta Nagai, Liam Gillick, Kites, Jutta Koether, Alan Licht, & Tom Verlaine, Black Dice, Arto Lindsay, DJ Olive the Audio Janitor, Phil Manley, David Grubbs, David Grubbs, Electrophilia (Steven Parrino and Jutta Koether), Carter Thornton, LoVid, Flanged Confection, Christian Marclay, Tim Barnes, Chris Corsano, Sean Meehan, Barry Weisblat and Michael Evans Tim Barnes, Rusty Santos, Roland Alley, Dearraindrop. Cover image is Icestorm, (2001) by Wolfgang Tillmans.



Music for Plants, Volume 2

A music compilation including contributions from Pauline Oliveros, Martin Creed, Nico Muhly, EYE, Tvilingarna (EmilySundblad, Andreas Nelson, and Paul Sigerhall), Growing, (SadieLaska and Joe DeNardo), Yoko Ono, Alice Coltrane Turiyasangtananda, Rhys Chatham, Jim O'Rourke, Taranabam (Ravish Momin, Rick Parker, Kevin Shea, Matt Mottel, ARP, Steven Reker, Brian DeGraw, Das Audit, Juliana Barwick, Lichens, the Space Lady, Hurray (Rich Aldrich, Peter Mandradjieff, Zak Prekop, and Josh Brand), Marina Rosenfeld, OOIOO, Stephen Vitiello, Tony Oursler with Brandon Olson, Melanie Schantz, Tracy Leipold, and Tony Conrad, Philip Glass, Sonic Boom and Delia Derbyshire, Big Legs (Mark Beasley and Dan Fox), Laurie Anderson, Sonic Youth, Thomas Brinkmann. Cover image is H1, 2006 by James Welling.




Music for Plants, Volume 3

A music compilation including contributions from Charlemagne Palestine, Ikue Mori, Patrick Higgins, Tujurikkuja (Kit Clayton and ChrisDixon), Marc Orleans and Luther Wong, Malcolm Mooney, L-Vis 1990, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Michael Pestel, Sahra Motalebi and Ryan Schaefer, Bernie Worrell and Arto Lindsay, James Hoff, Jamie Lidell and Lucky Paul, Maluca and Sal Principato (of Liquid Liquid), Ornament, Sun Araw, Stewart Bird and Hyggligt, Morricone Youth, Eaux, Hot Chip, Nicky Mao and Drew McDowall, Dubbel Dutch, Chargaux, Hidden Fees (Ivan Berko and Thomas Gluibizzi) Cover is Untitled (Flower Painting), 2005 by Nobuyoshi Araki.



 Music Interpreted by the Brain

The sounds on this CD were generated from brain waves produced while listening to a variety of music inside a sound-proof chamber and recorded using an Electroencephalogram (EEG). The EEG waveforms were transformed into audible sound waves by neurophysiologist, Gareth Spor. The track titles indicate what was being listened to while the EEG readings were taken in real time. The EEG readings were facilitated by neurophysiologist Christine Karns at the University of California's Neurophysiology Laboratory. The sound was mastered by Roland Alley at Final Cut, NY.