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inspiration

Johan Hybschmann: Book of Space


Book of Space was made by architecture student Johan Hybschmann while at the Bartlett, UCL. Johan was inspired by Sokurev’s film Russian Ark in which viewers travel through time as they move through the rooms of the Winter Palace. This all takes place in a single shot sequence. Johan writes:

The distortion of time is, of course, interesting in terms of the timelessness of the spaces – but the interest of the project lies in the way that the camera never looks back. Even though the viewer never sees the full dimensions of these spaces, we are still left with a sense of coherence and wholeness. It’s as if we constantly use the previous space to create an understanding of what should be behind us.

Book of Space draws directly on the film and transforms two scenes into constructed perspectives cut into the leaves of the book. The elements collide and the nature of the space changes as the user turns the pages.

For me, Book of Space is a fascinating and inspiring match of concept and construction as it explores spatiality and temporality through its content as well as through the book format. And I feel that the fragility of the cut-out pages brings a further reminder of the temporal nature of books as they are used.

See more images on Johan’s website..

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inspiration

Chisato Tamabayashi: Book Artist

Chisato Tamabayashi is a London-based artist who’s made a range of stunning books using cut-outs, printing and pop-ups. I thought I’d share a few of my favourites with you.

9 – 5 is a book of hand-cut images showing the shape and colour of a tree transforming through the seasons. Alongside this three miniature books nest inside the book cover illustrating smaller transformations of the tree at different speeds and times. The image below is not actually from the book because I couldn’t find any accessible photos of it. Instead these two pictures are from Chisato’s Season series and similar enough to give you some idea of the beautiful colours and delicate nature of the work.

Two untitled images from Season series

queue is designed as a pop-up book and as a fold-out pop-up scene. As a book each page shows a single car that, once unfolded, line up to form a traffic jam.

queue as a fold-out pop-up scene

The last project I’ll write about is branches which combines elements of both of the above (and do check out Chisato’s website because there are many more fabulous works to see!) branches is a pop-up book that explores the transformation of a family of trees in different seasons and of different generations. Like queue, branches can also be viewed as a fold-out scene showing all of the trees simultaneously.

I find these books completely inspiring and after looking at these I’m impatient for my next session of bookleteer experiments (last week I played with pop-ups and I’ll write about the results of that soon). I would love to see what Chisato would make out of the bookleteer eBooks and StoryCubes..

All of the projects I describe here (and more) are on Chisato’s website..

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inspiration

Cut-out


Cover and Page 1 of the cut-out version of Dusk by Saki

Another bookleteer experiment I thought I’d show you is another  version of Dusk by Saki. This short story is set in the West End of London around Piccadilly and this time I illustrated the eBook with a cut-out of a map of this area.

bookleteer eBooks are made by folding  and cutting sheets of A4 paper and slotting these together to make the final A6 size eBook (see here for a detailed video of how this is done). One sheet of A4 paper makes 4 eBook pages. Thanks to the folding technique pages from one sheet are not included in sequence but are interspersed throughout the eBook.

For the cut-out eBook I marked up one A4 sheet with 4 A6 size boxes and put a section of the map into each leaving a reasonable sized border so that the final eBook pages wouldn’t be too flimsy. Once I had cut out the map I cut the A4 sheet vertically down the centre (you would cut the sheet differently for different designs of eBook) and inserted it amongst the A4 translucent sheets onto which I’d printed the text.

Dusk cut-out eBook deconstructed

Because the map was only printed on one side of the A4 sheet the flip side of the cut-out pages is blank. I really like the effect of seeing the text through the cut-outs and the fragile quality that the cut-outs give to the book.

(See some other bookleteer experiments here)

Categories
inspiration

Your House: Olafur Eliasson

A few pages from Your House, Olafur Eliasson

Looking deceptively simple, Your House by Olafur Eliasson (the artist behind the Weather Project at Tate Modern in 2005) is beautiful and detailed. The book shows a laser-cut negative impression of Eliasson’s house in Copenhagen. As you move from the front to the back of the book you make your way through the rooms of the house constructing a mental and physical narrative as you go. Every sheet is individually cut and every time you turn the page your perspective on the building changes. Each page is to scale and corresponds to 2.2 cm of the actual house.

The book is a limited edition of 225, published by the Library Council of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2006. Concept by Olafur Eliasson, design is by Michael Heimann, Claudia Baulesch / groenland.berlin.

See more pictures of it on Olafur Eliasson’s website here..