an edition of found texts
© Andrew Hurle 1996

drift is a collection of discarded texts that have been found by chance on urban footpaths and in city parks.
This found material is often handwritten and has been either typeset or reproduced photographically on the page. Care has been taken in typesetting so as to maintain the integrity of the original text. This means that composition has remained faithful to the letter and not necessarily the spirit of the found text. In most cases spelling, syntax and line structure have all been preserved.
 
The inspiration for setting found notes in type was initially to satisfy my curiosity about what was being said in the messages, to seperate the message from the dirt, crumpled paper and shaky script that makes reading difficult. My intention was to clarify the message, not by summary or reduction, but rather the opposite, by drawing it out and insisting on its literal description.
In some cases this makes clear what the writer has meant to communicate, while in others it reveals a discrepancy or slippage between what the text means and what the text says.
Typesetting also has the effect of 'desentimentalising' the message. By removing evidence that the hand has crafted or abandoned the message, one is less distracted by the idea that it is a cloudy form of self-expression, but gains (more usefully) the sense of the note as an agent of formal communication - a personal contract of intention or action. Most of the texts are meant to act as levers in the world. They are either rehearsals or implementations of real actions. In spite of the fact that they are clumsily hand-written, they are (in a sense) a kind of business letter dictated by the conscious mind to the hand and enscribed underneath a personal letterhead.
It is intended that the humanity and pathos that would otherwise be conveyed by the decrepitude or shabbiness of the note, should instead be evident in its composition - in the manner in which it contrives to announce its message.

Four years after drift was first published, FOUND magazine was started in USA by Davy Rothbart and Jason Bitner. The basis of their magazine is much like drift except that the found material is just transcribed rather than typeset. It differs from drift also in that the editors heavily promote their publication throughout the US and in Europe and actively solicit material from readers. To date they have had a spot on the David Letterman show, organised a tour of the States and branched into found video and 'Adult' finds. Apart from demonstrating some misgivings about the heavy-handed nature of FOUND's approach I guess I'm mentioning them here so that I don't seem ignorant and also to clarify some things that distinguish my project from theirs.
And of course, to declare that I was there first.

Here are 13 example pages from a collection of about 200. To view them in order, please click here or if you prefer, jump to any page by clicking on its number below: