Finally, the book of The Toaster Project is published by Princeton Architectural Press! I have been sent an advance copy and I am well pleased with it – a big hat tip to Paul Wagner the designer at PAPress.

It becomes available (according to Amazon) on the 1st November 2011 – weirdly seeing it available for pre-order on Amazon makes if feel really real. But I am quite looking forward to walking in to a bookshop and finding it… ‘Available in all good bookshops’? I hope so (though I’m not sure it’ll be on the counter at Waterstones or whatever, like my friend Pat’s excellent book which is somehow both less, and in a way, more niche).

So, you can buy it from amazon here or direct from Princeton Architectural Press here if you feel so inclined!

I will also be having a book launch at some point in November somewhere in London. I’m not entirely sure where yet (any suggestions?), but I’ll put it on my calendar of events when i’ve worked it out.

Regine from the excellent site we-make-money-not-art got in touch with some good questions about Policing Genes, which she’d seen in the windows of the Wellcome Trust (pictured).

The questions and my quite exhaustive answers are published here.

I’ve just finished (as in yesterday) the third and hopefully mostly-final revision of the text of the Toaster Project book which is going to be published by Princeton Architectural Press. I wrote up the project in a kind of book (graphic designed by my friend A Young Kim) which I exhibited alongside the toaster. In a moment of ‘slightly drunken networking’ (the only ‘networking’ I do), I showed it to Michael Bierut who’s a partner at Pentagram design in New York, who liked it and who showed it to his friend who’s a publisher at Princeton Architectural Press, who also liked it, who’s going to publish it! It needed extensive revision though, which is why it’s taken me so long. It’s coming out in Autumn 2011 (there’s a weird thing in the book world apparently where one only publishes one’s book in either the Spring or Autumn).

I gave a lecture at TED Salon (kind of half-yearly mini-TEDs they run) in London before Christmas about my toaster project.

The whole TED thing was quite nerve wracking – they really drum it in to you that you must be well rehearsed, and that some great people have come un-stuck on the TED stage by being underprepared etc. I think one person giving a talk on the day took this rather to heart, and it was like they had memorised the whole thing which wasn’t a good strategy. Anyway, being over-prepared is something I’ve never had to worry about (its opposite has caused me a lot of extreme worry in the past however), and my talk went well, and it’s recently been posted on the TED website.

Lots of comments which is great, some positive, some critical and valid given only the 8 minutes of talk or something, and some critical and just inane. Anyway here it is!