This is my final major project about the conceptualization of the Book. My research was initiated by my interest in notions of presenting and exhibiting and the display mechanisms that are employed in both two and three-dimensional space.
Literary and philosophical theories about the Book as a literature container and abstract form informed my understanding and inspired me to take a conceptual approach on the treatment of the spatial and temporal qualities of the book.
Adopting, appropriating, and iterating techniques introduced by the genre of Artists’ Books I am exploring the role of design employing methods of documenting and presenting.
Focusing on the Book as an object, tool, carrier of ideas and an alternative exhibition space, I tried to realize it in its most poetic sense demonstrating the role of the graphic designer as Researcher, Author, Designer, Producer and Reader. As in many Artists’ Books, this book will return to the gallery as an artifact, and be circulated through cultural platforms.
The following is my research portfolio that includes my primary and secondary research. The visual experiments conducted throughout the year are displayed in a separate, overlaying layer, a smaller book inside the book. The secondary research that informed the experiments and the development of the project is exhibited on the back, showing the process and the stages of the research.
The book as a medium has been praised by many writers, philosophers, artists and designers for its cultural and figurative abundance. Mallarmé’s vision of the potentiality of The Book to embody “all earthly existence”, using its form to “establish some nameless system of relationships” epitomises the conceptual attention that has been drawn to the book. In this project, contextualization of this idea is attempted, as homage to the artist’s book of which aesthetics excel and utilisation thrives. It should be seen as a small contribution to The Book and as my personal interpretation of the connections linking the different critical frameworks that have been studied throughout my year-long studies. It is an attempt to demonstrate its capacity to incarnate the soul of the world.
From the Body to the World back to the Body is the evidence of this extensive research and my understanding of it. A deconstruction and reconstruction of the book’s form. The performativity of the act of reading is transferred onto the space of the book; from the structure of the book goes to the architectural space to end up back to the space of the book, informing one another and transforming this process into a performative exploration.