Regarding the thinking raised in brief, I think I will answer from the perspective of paper space.
Before naked-eye VR technology (I mean people can operate and design like Iron Man) became popular, I always believed that paper has more and clearer spatial possibilities than electronic screens. The paper is not restricted by electronic components and can be bent, stacked and combined at will. Before the increasingly advanced electronic information technology breaks through the limitations of the screen, its impact on paper has always been to promote its artistic development. Instead of replacing.
Therefore, in this project, I finally adopted the form of art books to explore the way of information transmission.
Poetry comprehension
Initial understanding
First, I recorded my preliminary understanding and feelings about Kae’s poem.
My first reaction to this poem was that I felt a strong hope from the author to awaken the reader from the chaotic state. The first half of the poem focuses on describing people’s numbness to society. Numbness about receiving information.
People seem to have lost their own opinions because of too much undifferentiated information. It even enters a state where it is necessary to continuously maintain high-speed access to information. It seems that this is normal and meaningful.
This reminds me of McLuhan’s The Medium is the massage. People seem to regard the impact of information as a kind of massage.
This poem hopes to call people to wake up from this numbness and look at their own inner thoughts instead of always accepting thoughts from outside.
Deep understanding
After that, I analyzed this word sentence by sentence. And recorded my understanding of each sentence. Mainly the pictures and signifiers that I understand. Basically, the overall direction of the new feeling and the initial impression is the same. From explaining the actual situation to showing the problem, and explaining the cause of the problem, and then explaining the solution, finally expressing full of hope. People numb in the chaos need to be awakened urgently. You should see clearly the obstacles in front of you and feel the essence of life with your heart.
At the beginning, I read about people’s hatred and regret for being controlled by capital without knowing it. The strong smell of corruption and deceit emanating from the text can detect the bad guidance that consumers have encountered. However, people’s blindness makes themselves deep in it and loses themselves. As the root of the problem became clear, I felt that I should focus more on my heart and my life, instead of being driven by unscrupulous capital to consume.
For example, in the first paragraph, I felt a criticism of the reality. It describes the hypocrisy of people’s good lives. It’s like a cancer cell that spreads quietly, and an optical illusion that makes people confused about reality. The strong smell of corruption and deceit emanating from the text can detect the bad guidance that people encounter.
The second paragraph tells of people’s numbness to this erosion. It seems that I have lost my self-awareness, and I am stuck in it because I don’t have my own thinking. It’s like a kid kidnapped after being coaxed by candy. There is nothing you can do about the controlled state.
The third and fourth paragraphs reveal the disguise of evil forces. It’s just a temptation that people can’t resist. To resist these temptations requires a firm heart.
The fifth paragraph is relatively long, it tells people’s inner dilemma. And how cruel the power of capital is. It’s like a contract with the devil. And we must stop making unnecessary and cheap sacrifices. It is necessary to see the nature of the reality we are facing. Try to get rid of these constraints.
The sixth paragraph is the name of the title. Reveals the theme of this poem.
The seventh paragraph seems to tell me that we must take action. Stick to your inner needs for life. Can’t look back and hesitate. Because there is no retreat when fighting against these evil forces. We must race against time.
Exploration of manifestations
I tried different expressions based on my own associations.
I imagined how to express my associations in the final book. For example, using alcohol can fade some prints. The crumpled paper is like rejection. The action of smoothing the note to read the content corresponds to the content of the beast in the verse. And use some overlapping structures to show deception. Use some acidic effects to show temptation. Use torn paper to show the uncovered truth, and so on.
Because my overall feeling of this poem is a kind of exploration and truth-seeking. So I hope to express this exploration through the structure of some papers. This reminds me of the structure of onions. It is wrapped in layers, and the chef needs to peel off the outer skin to obtain a crispy core when handling it. This reminded me that in ancient China, as well as in some regions and vendors now, oily paper was used to wrap food or medicinal materials layer by layer. The structure of this paper bag resembles a burger People need to open the paper layer by layer to get the content hidden in it. So I thought of a traditional Chinese origami technique. It is usually used by grandma to store needles and threads and embroidery samples. I think this multi-layer structure is in line with my needs for the spatiality of information carriers. Each part of this origami structure is like a window and requires an opening action. This action can be seen as a kind of exploring action. This is also in line with the feeling of the whole poem. I think I can sum up this feeling with exploration and truth.
Production process
So I studied this structure. It has a total of 31 parts that can be opened and closed. So I need to divide this word into 31 paragraphs. These 31 components can be divided into 5 groups of different sizes. There are 5 floors from the inside to the outside. Therefore, the amount of content that can be carried by the components of each layer is different. The lower and lower components can carry more content.
I folded some samples out of waste paper for experiments. I marked the plane that can effectively organize and transmit information. After re-spreading, the design template was obtained. My design content will be mainly expressed in these areas. And the relationship between different components. In order to consider the overall structure of the content.
Based on these analyses, I drew a draft of each part. Some are illustrations, and some are text designs. There are also these simple paper interactions. My purpose is to increase the interactivity of readers. I want to strengthen the meaning of exploration in the process of reading this poem.
Draft – Floor 01
Draft – Floor 02
Draft – Floor 03
Draft – Floor 04
Draft – Floor 05
Print documents
Then I use procreate, Photoshop and ai to complete the final visual content. Because I did it while studying the structure while improving it, I could only simply record the production process. Probably after editing the content of each page, it is unified on the print file. After printing, cut out the material of each part, fold it and glue it together. I originally wanted to make a five-hole bound nude spine cover. But because the content of my book is not normal stacked paper, traditional binding methods may be difficult to achieve. So I chose to glue the cover.
I used double-sided printing. The pictures above partially show some of the printing effects.
Here is a video recording the production process.
Final work
I made simple reading tips on the spine of the book. For example, this book needs to be read horizontally from left to right. And different rectangles represent different levels. The ideal reading order is from left to right, from the first level to the last fifth level. But it is also possible to break this order. It can also be seen as a process of wanting to know the cause after knowing the result. It is also an exploration.
Although I printed a sample before I started to try the effect. But I didn’t expect it to be thicker than I imagined after the final stacking. So this structure makes this book somewhat difficult to close. This is a shortcoming at this stage.
