The Binary Book Series

Classics in the Modern Age

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A three-volume set of books that can't be read so much as interpreted...

Hand-Signed First Editions:

Second Editions are also available.

Romeo and Juliet

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Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare. The Binary Translation.

Can machines understand love? Now they can, with the one of the most famous love tragedies of all time retold in machine language. How do you say "I love you" in binary?

01001001 01101100011011110111011001100101 011110010110111101110101

Book Details

Paperback:115 pages
Publisher: Paintings.Drawings.Arithmetic
Language: Binary
Characters: 878,401 (with spaces)
Dimensions: 15.2 cm x 22.9 cm x o.6 cm
Medium: Paper, Ink
Edition: Hand-signed and individually numbered edition of 500

Genesis

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GENESIS, the King James version. The Binary Translation.

Genesis, the first book of the bible, tells the story of God's creation of Man and the Earth. Translated into 1's and 0's, the beginning of everything is now retold in the most basic of languages.

Book Details

Paperback: 169 pages
Publisher: Paintings.Drawings.Arithmetic
Language: Binary
Characters: 1,303,123 (with spaces)
Dimensions:15.2 cm x 22.9 cm x 1 cm
Medium: Paper, Ink
Edition: Hand-signed and individually numbered edition of 500

The War of the Worlds

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The War of the Worlds by HG Wells. The Binary Translation.

This classic tale of science fiction about an alien race intent on destroying all of humanity has not only been made into several movies, but also caused riots and mass hysteria upon its' 1938 radio broadcast. Machines can now enjoy the privilege of reading about mankind's struggle to prevail against advanced technologies.

Book Details

Paperback: 296 pages
Publisher: Paintings.Drawings.Arithmetic
Language: Binary
Characters: 2,303,592 (with spaces)
Dimensions: 15.2 cm x 22.9 cm x 1.5 cm
Medium: Paper, Ink
Edition: Hand-signed and individually numbered edition of 500

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The Binary Book series was originally conceived as a three volume set of three-dimensional prints by the artist Justin Gohde. Each volume is a binary translation of a literary classic and available as both a hand-signed individually numbered print (edition of 500) and an unlimited second edition.

First conceiving of the binary book series in 2005, artist Justin Gohde took four years to create the series of books. Painstakingly encoding each individual letter into eight binary digits, his modern translations of such classics as “War of the Worlds,” “Romeo and Juliet,” and “Genesis” employ the same ASCII subset of international Unicode standards as most keyboards.

He explains, “I wanted to make a book that can’t be read, so much as interpreted… ” Justin focuses upon symbols, ideal forms, and approximations of space. "Here's one of my favorite quotes, " says Justin Gohde, “ 'You can tell the beginning of a new age by the way people start retelling old stories in a different way'.... I wanted manifest an opposite, to create a book that is explicitly intended to be not read. I like to provoke conversation and communication of ideas... ...the ideal of the story is more imporant than the symbols on the page."

The Binary Book series:

Frequently Asked Questions

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Known as machine language, binary code is most often represented with 1's and 0's. Binary is the basic alphabet of the computer, the foundation of modern electronics and the internet...

The Binary Book series uses the same ASCII subset of international Unicode standards that represents each letter in the English alphabet with a series of eight 1's and 0's.