"Leif Codices" is a new work for the Internet by Jorn Ebner, featuring computer-based artist-eBooks and decorative animation for online viewing. Its hybrid form, comprising off-line and internet-based components, emphasizes a sculptural quality permeating its overall visual structure; it is a self-contained composition, that provides connection to the broader webscape; yet it reflects back to the user who is required to discover the mechanism underlying the work's components.

"Leif Codices" consists of two sections 'Landscape' and 'Library': 'Landscape' takes the viewer through a sequence of online-animations which employ fragmented browser display and user activation as their main formal feature. 'Library', by contrast, is a mere container for a series of artist eBooks: "Pollen Connection Point", "Border Patrol", "Party Turnstile", "Conflict Mountain", "O[c|k]tober", "Road Works" and "Equilibrium Panel". With the exception of "O[c|k]tober" - an online diary of images collected from daily updated websites and linked to news-sites across the world - these books are available for download and off-line viewing. Their often complex structures merge abstract form and literal images in a idiosyncratic investigation into possible meanings of landscape, from the personally obscure to the politically obvious.

The eBooks are both linear and non-linear structures: the user can simply use the arrow-buttons on the keyboard to browse through the books, or discover hidden links within the pages to move through them.
"Pollen Connection Point", "Border Patrol", "Party Turnstile" and "Road Works" also contain sub-books and parallel-books for the user to discover, whereas "Conflict Mountain" and "Equilibrium Panel" only have one image sequence. Each work employs pdf technology with javascript to create a new form of electronic book (or book in general), that can also be printed out as a picture series. Each, with the exception of "O[c|k]tober", is a self contained, computer-based work of art. "O[c|k]tober" displays images in small individual browser-windows that provide links to the contemporary world of news information: the main source of literal imagery throughout "Leif Codices".

The work was made possible through an AHRB Research Fellowship at Newcastle University.

Technical requirements:
The online structure is best viewed on Internet Explorer 5+ and Netscape 6 (but not 7) and requires a Flash5 Plug-in. It works best with a fast connection. The eBooks require Acrobat Reader 5+. Some are, for the time being, Macintosh only.

Jorn Ebner is a London-based artist. He is currently an Arts and Humanities Research Board funded Research Fellow at Newcastle University. His previous online projects include "Lee Marvin Toolbox" (awarded the Kunstpreis 2001 of Medienforum München) and "Life Measure Contructions" (2000/01), a New Media Scotland Commission. Group shows include "Discourski" at Galeria Arsenal in Bialystok, Poland (2002), and "Predator" at kx.kampnagel, Hamburg, Germany(2001).

http://leifcodices.info
http://www.leemarvintoolbox.net
http://www.lifemeasure.org