This week is a tight-scheduled week for Tony’s project— AN EDITION OF…. AN EDITION OF…. is a two-day project based around artists’ books and editions. We are required to make our own limited edition object/book. This small ‘publication’ we are to make focuses on an aspect of the walk we undertook with Michael last Monday. Part or all of the material we collected during the walk should therefore form the basis of the ‘publication’ we produce. Tony showed us lots of his collections of artists’ books and editions in order to inspire us with a diversity of book forms and contexts. This is an calendar edition from an American artist called Erica Van Horn(http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/digitallibrary/vanhorn.html). In this calendar, she collected the inside of the envelope, in which the letter sent to her was put. Then she cut piece of the interior and pasted it onto the pages of every month. What inspired me is that the designer view things in uncommon ways. The interior of the envelope had different patterns on it. But it is not easy or regular to look at. This is a very good example for me to look at. Because I believe designers should be able to show people something even though it is ordinary but not that easy to find out. That is one of the essential abilities of a designer. He/she can look into something in unordinary way or from special aspects. Another inspiring book is the above one that it cuts a piece of hole every page. It’s very interesting to do this because readers and see some patterns/colors/images on the next page through this hole. Then, it becomes a part of this page. And if you turn over the page then you realize it is a hole actually. In this ‘publication’, we are required to use what we collect from THE WALK led by Michael. As we were required to make 13 copies of this, we needed to think about what kinds of forms or outcomes would be suitable. Looking back at what I have got from the walk, it was mostly a obscure impression because it was just the forth day I arrived in London. So Camberwell was plain to me and I was just following the way Michael led us. I was just a stranger to the area not knowing where we were heading for, what is the name of the street. I came up with an idea that being a new comer, it could be fun even though you have known nothing about it. Then, how could it be? Coming into a new place, we can do many things to explore the land and get to know more about it. But it is because it is new to me, so I have no idea about what to do to explore this place. Actually, we can just follow our intuition and go anywhere we want to. Then it comes to an idea called ‘Just Follow Your Heart’. This comes from a little game that I played in childhood. In Chinese, we call it ‘Dong-Nan-Xi-Bei’(East-South-West-North). It is a kind of game that we played to play tricks on each other. We need to fold the paper into a shape and we write the four directions on the top of it. Choose a direction and count for a number. Then we starts to move the paper and it stops at the times we have choose already. Then unfold the paper to see what you should do. What I want to do in this is to create a little game for people to play when they come to a new place. They may have no idea about what they can do. So they can play this little game to help them find out what is interesting in this new city. I designed this because this could become an interaction with the reader. They could play as the instructions at the back. And this originally was graphic, but it could be dimensional as well as after folded. It’s just like the Yohji Wave in the Wapping Project. Audience could be more absorbed in the work. Besides, by folding the paper, they themselves take part in the completion of the work and can have interaction with the designer. That is the distinguishing feature of it.
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