Tim Mosely’s PhD (completed in 2014) addressed the research question - can the haptic inform the emerging critical field of artists books? The original creative works he produced through studio based research critically respond to artists books discourse and practice. His research established that haptic aesthetics; historically informed the emergence of artists books as a field of art practice, continues to shape the field’s developing critical terminology, and that studio research into the haptic touch must inform the field’s maturation.

Two prominent figures within these fields, Johanna Drucker and Anni Albers, placed calls within the literature for terminology and vocabulary that facilitate the critical maturation of both artists books and haptic aesthetics. This essay, published within the leading journal in the field (The Journal of Artists Books, published by Columbia College Chicago) and now being cited within the literature, initiates Mosely’s contribution in these fields to that end. The essay specifically relates Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s theorisation of the haptic to artists book practice. By positioning terminology and vocabulary drawn directly from his studio and literature research into the discourse Mosely expands the capacity of the discourse to articulately engage the haptic touch of books. The terminology includes; the haptic touch, smooth space, striated space, directed smooth space and haptic and optic modes of production.