Spurned on from a rumor Publishers Weekly overheard at the Frankfurt Book Fair, David Bowie’s website has confirmed that he’ll be publishing a coffee table book cum object d’art called Bowie: Object.
Bowie: Object is a collection of pieces from the Bowie archive, wherein, for the first time, fans and all those interested in popular culture will have the opportunity to understand more about the Bowie creative process and his impact on modern popular music.
Bowie: Object features 100 fascinating items that give an insight into the life of one of the most unique music and fashion icons in history. The book’s pictorial content is annotated with insightful, witty and personal text written by Bowie himself.
Designed by Barnbrook, Bowie: Object is simply and boldly designed and each of the objects is photographed in a clean, contemporary style.
Below is one of the objects that they strongly hint will be in the book, a Kirlian Photographic Device that Bowie was given by Dr. Thelma Moss at the Dept. of Parapsychology, UCLA, in 1975. There was a picture of it contained in the Station to Station tour guide memento. If the aim of this book is to show Bowie’s impact, not only on music, but culture in general, then this is a very good example.
Why you ask? To give you a personal (and very small) example of the multitude of ways David Bowie has influenced little old me, when I was 10 years old and Bowie was the guest on Dinah Shore’s afternoon talk/variety show, he was able to invite Dr. Moss on as a guest as well. Moss demonstrated the ability of the Kirlian device—a high voltage electric field “camera”—to basically take snapshots of plant and human “auras.” Because Bowie was fascinated by this wild new science of Kirlian photography, then, hey, so was I and—this is true—I built a home-made version of the Kirlian Photographic device for a grade-school science fair!
It was made with a battery, a wood base, some wires, a metal plate and used 2” by 2” film, which was placed under the plate, and sent a jolt via the battery to expose the film. Now, granted, at that age, I wasn’t testing the “before and after” side-effects of snorting cocaine on my aura (see above) like Bowie was—-I used leaves and my thumbprint—but still, you can see clearly in this stupid example of how I, a little kid at the time, saw David Bowie as this like, larger than life cultural avatar of the newest and coolest things around. I must say, I’m really looking forward to this book!
And if you haven’t heard, there is a brand new, just released massive 5 CD/3LP/DVD collector’s box (two different ones, actually) of Bowie’s monumental 1976 album, Station To Station, including the much-bootlegged “Nassau Coliseum ‘76” show from that tour and a new 5:1 surround remix of the album.
Below, A shit hot version of Station to Station’s “Stay” performed on Dinah! in 1976.