SOUNDTRACK: THE VESTIBULES-“Boulbous Bouffant” (1995).
This is a fantastic comedy bit of euphonics. It starts out a bit slow–without a clear point. But once it picks up, it is outstanding. And you’ll find yourself saying…oh all kinds of things for no reason.
[READ: May 15, 2014] Book from the Ground
Xu Bing is a Chinese artist. He caused some stir several years ago with his exhibition Book from the Sky, a set of books, panels and scrolls on which were printed thousands of characters resembling real Chinese characters, but which were nonsense. Xu spent years hand carving the typesetting blocks used to make the prints according to traditional Chinese block printing methods. Each block was embossed with a unique but meaningless symbol and then used to make the prints for the exhibit. It was controversial and he even lost favor with the Chinese government.
That project was conceived as a “book” that no one could read. With Book from the Ground, he has attempted to create a book that literally everyone could read.
The entire story of this book is told with icons. There are no words at all.
It is the story of a man as he lives his day from the time he wakes up until he falls asleep late that night.
The icons are mostly but not entirely universal–they depend upon the reader being familiar with contemporary technological life (icons for Amazon and GMail for instance might confuse some–or maybe they have saturated the market enough that they are universal by now).
The story opens with us zooming in on the man as he sleeps. It is 7AM and he is awoken by a bird and by his alarm. We see him wake up, use the bathroom, make (and ruin) breakfast and then head to work. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 