You probably guessed. It was false economy trying to do the layout on Photoshop just because I know how to use it. I spent yesterday watching terrible YouTubes and gradually realizing Photoshop wouldn’t do the job and Illustrator would, and this morning watching increasingly less patronizing videos getting to grips with beginners’ Illustrator.
AND NOW it is with brow-quivering pride that I share with you my very first Illustrator file that exactly matches BUT IN VECTOR FORM the cut-out I originally made and scanned in. It’s taken all day and it’s composed of about four lines, but good heavens I am proud.
The laser cutter at Book Works will follow the vectors and cut out neat uniform versions of the scalpel-cut pages I’ve been making at home. One down, 23 to go. Six days to go. That’s fine right?
Some progress. Last week at the Book Works studio we chose papers for the pages, cover and slipcase, looked at examples of debossing and made some decisions about the colour of the text. And agreed an alarmingly fine deadline for all the artwork to arrive at the studio. June 6th.
Today it’s too sunny to sit at my computer setting up Photoshop templates (it should probably be Illustrator but I haven’t time to learn the software) so I’m out in the garden handling my olololo mockups and struggling with instructions. Before my laptop battery runs out I thought I’d note down my thoughts.
I need to settle on some kind of instructions for how to use the book.
I’ve tried writing straightforward instructions in words but they make the actions sound obvious and cumbersome, like I’m explaining the punchline of a joke. As the title isn’t strictly language (you can read ‘olololo’ as a word or look at it as a sequence of shapes) I’d like to keep the whole book free of language altogether if it’s possible. It’s also for this reason that I’m printing the bibliographical information on the slipcase rather than in the book itself.
We talked about omitting instructions from the book altogether but including a QR code linking to an online video that shows the book in use. We decided against it. No doubt QR codes will be out of date in a couple of years – they’re certainly ubertrendy today – and more immediately it would spread the book out past the edges of its pages. I don’t want a separate online annexe, I’d rather have the book self-contained.
Diagrams are another option. Quite abstract arrows and circles are a possibility because they would reference the abstract-ish title and slots. I’ve been looking at systems of choreographic notation ever since I went to a dance notation conference at Coventry University earlier this year, and some of these graphical symbols appeal. Likewise some of the symbols associated with various attempts to write down sign languages on paper. But all of these are able to appear abstract and simple because they’re refined systems of communication that need learning in their own right. I want the instructions self-contained without introducing a new diagrammatic language into an already diagrammatic book.
That’s the current dilemma. Now. Too much sun.
HELLO I’m back. As far as I can make out the Modern Art Oxford book didn’t acquire a Brooklyn twang while I was away. (Now I think about it another project has, but that’s separate.)
Today I’m at my desk drawing roughs for the book. It has a title now: olololo. All lower case so it appears as a series of circles and lines that you can read or look at or both.
I’ve just finished making a quarter-size second mock-up from printer paper and one of those brass paper fasteners. The 24 pages are all splayed out in a circle and I’ve been drawing circular lines across all the pages to work out where to put the slots, tabs and perforations.
In my first mock-up the pages are cut in no particular order apart from a general increase in complexity as the experimentation gathered pace. It’s not bad. But I’d like some kind of visual storyline to emerge as you work through the book, so that you can see the movements your pencil has been through even though the paper rather than the pencil has been moving. I’d like all the slots to line up continuously when the book is all opened out, in the way that the pencil is in continuous contact with the book despite the turning of pages.
Another change is that all the pages are going to rotate left like script leaving a nib, rather than rotating in either direction according to the direction of the cut. It restricts the range of slots I can use, and restricts the way the slots can visually connect once they’re all splayed out in a circle. But I think it’s an important way to emphasise the relationship between drawing and movement in the book, so the restrictions will be worthwhile if I can get it to work.
So that’s the plan for today. That and working with the radio off. I switched it off earlier and all the lines I’d been drawing snapped suddenly into focus, and I saw little relations and imperfections and scratches that had been drowned out by all the noise.
The artist book I’m working on is all about the gesticulations the book itself causes you to make as you work your way through it from beginning to end. I’ve been experimenting with pleats and folds and cuts and pop-ups as ways of provoking the hands to make various sequences of movements a couple of inches above the surface of the page.
But I’ve been having trouble because the repeated need to turn the page adds a regular punctuation of page-turning gesticulations that work on a different register from the movements I’ve been trying out. It looked like the page-turning movement was either going to get in the way (which wouldn’t do) or would have to be scrapped altogether (difficult if there are multiple pages) or would have to be integrated into the general narrative of the movements. I think I’ve found a way to make option 3 work.
From the photos you can see I’m now working with pages that pivot in a circle rather than turning right to left about a vertical spine like a normal book. The pivot movement then generates all the other movements, which are restricted by the tip of a pencil you can fix into a single punched hole in each page and then direct through the book by curved and angled slots scored into the pages. Each page needs to be manipulated in a different way to keep the book working, so there are tabs and folds (and maybe printed arrows?) selectively placed about the pages to help the movements run smoothly. After all the movements the pencil’s gone through, by the time you reach the last page you realize all you’ve drawn is a dot.
It’s still at a fairly early stage: the launch isn’t until July 12 and the final phase of production should take less than a month. That leaves me just under two months to settle the details. (Though I’ll be out of the country for one of them. Furrowed brow.) To my downright delight the Book Works studio has agreed to take on design and production of the book, and we’ll be working together with Modern Art Oxford through the coming months to make a limited edition of 200. That’s the plan for now.
But tomorrow I’m going away to New York for three weeks where I will not think at all about the book, unless in unplanned and unfamiliar ways. By the time I get back I might have changed my mind altogether. The whole thing might have a Brooklyn twang.
ANYWAY. Below is a slideshow recording of the artist talk I gave at the gallery on February 19th, the final day of my ‘Keeping Time’ exhibition. One articulation of that ‘cloud’ I wrote about last month.
It’s rather lengthy but I thought I’d include it on the blog for completeness, so everything’s safely in one place.
Tamarin Norwood discusses the ideas and practices informing ‘Keeping Time’, her Project Space residency and exhibition at Modern Art Oxford. Recorded 19 February 2012.
