RE:STRUCTURE: the Book as a Performative Object
Research Project
Hypothesis
The library is founded on the traditional principle of being interested in traditional material culture, but when it comes to digital objects their constraints and contexts are different.
i. Libraries are information spaces inhabited by books.
ii. A book is a frame for its content.
iii. Typography is the appearance of the content.
In a chain reaction, if typography mutates to become three-dimensional then the contents of the book will require a different performance from the reader. As a result, the library becomes a different space, an embodied space for performing this new book format.
Practice exploration
'Re-structure' is a speculative research project looking at how to re-imagine the book as a performative object. Throughout the research, the notion of 'object boundary' (1) is used to explore the anatomy of the book: its content (2) and mode of navigating/reading it (3). This project aims to involve the audience in a discussion about the future of books and emerging technologies.
Using the book ‘Graphic design manual’ by Armin Hofmann, I wanted to explore its boundaries by creating a digital extension to the original artifact (apply the object-boundary theory in practice). The outcome of the research experiment is a prototype of this digital extension created using Adobe Dimension, Adobe XD and HTML Interactive Canvas.
