Looking for an old "pass it on" style scrapbook project

December 4, 2007 9:44 AM

6 - 9 years ago there was an project where x empty books were sent out to x different people, who then filled one page, and passed the book on to someone else. What was this project?

There was a project between 6 and 9 years ago that, I believe, was called something like "1000 Books", "100 Books", "50 Books".. The person who started it bought a number of plain Moleskine-esque books, then sent them out to random people with the instructions that they had to do a page, forward the book to someone else, then the final person had to send the books back. I recall the project site itself was very well designed for the time and even had reports back from people who had somehow got hold of the books.. you could track each book by its number, etc. I seem to recall the site looking very Kottke-esque.

The project was so popular that I recall people were dying to get their hands on a book but there was too much interest. I'm now interested to know what happened to the finished books (if they ever were finished and returned) and/or the person who started the project.

(Alternatively, if you know of any similar projects, feel free to mention!)

posted by wackybrit to media & arts (8 comments total)

1000 journals?
posted by iconomy at 9:52 AM on December 4, 2007

This?
posted by sulaine at 9:54 AM on December 4, 2007

Not sure about the original project, but there was a pass-the-camera project on RangefinderForum.
posted by o0dano0o at 9:56 AM on December 4, 2007

The Wandering Moleskine Project?
posted by nkknkk at 10:04 AM on December 4, 2007

iconomy: They've had a radical redesign, but yes.. that's the one! Thanks!

Enjoying looking at the other ones too, especially the Moleskine one, so if anyone wants to post about any others this could probably be a useful resource :) Thanks!
posted by wackybrit at 10:22 AM on December 4, 2007

There was also Kevin Fox's project, Randompixel doing a similar pass-the-camera project - started in 1998, the results from several cameras posted in 2004 (with a few previews earlier) and further results always expected at some point in the near future.

Random trivia - before it was known as randompixel the project was called cameo.
posted by langeNU at 11:09 AM on December 4, 2007

There were a number of these "networked art projects" that had online & offline components and came out of the traditional mail art movement (things like Artist Trading Cards, etc.) 1000 Journals was among the earliest of the large-scale web-based projects, but several others sprung up around 2000-2001, including nervousness.org, which was designed as an infrastructure for people who wanted to create their own projects or swaps.
posted by judith at 1:56 PM on December 4, 2007

wackybrit, I actually have one of the journals, completely empty, sitting on my bookshelf. I got it from the site back when they launched, but never did anything with it. Send me an email if you want me to mail it to you.
posted by Inkoate at 2:00 PM on December 4, 2007