“Iteration 0”

Iteration 0 is a picture of a specific portion of railing on a Sightseeing Ship. Iteration 0 came from the investigating project I did, in which I took a deep look at a specific section of park fence and experimented illustration and binding as methods to document a physical object and try to demonstrate a more careful perspective to view that object through a printed publication. While deconstructing ‘ the fence’ , meanings and reflections started to float around, which I didn’t really manage to capture in that publication. Also, questions arose from making: From a cultural and symbolic perspective, the meanings and reflections that emerge seem to come from somewhere in-between personal experiences and an identification of some common significance, and how can I capture and visualize that ambiguous concept through small visual narrations?

Mindmap

I considered writing as a good and direct method to explore my question as to start. So I used a piece of blank paper to list all the aspects/angles/meanings that came into my mind based on iteration 0, ‘it‘. As shown on the sheet, the divergence of meaning was not random, but following a specific order, from general description to multi-perspective concepts, and through each iteration, the meanings became more blurry and abstract. When it came to a point where I felt like being in a ruins of ‘it‘s meanings, I just left the ruins there and I started to ‘pick up puzzles’ and rebuild the concept of ‘it‘ through a fictional narration. And in the later part of iterating, I felt a tendency of text being visual as texts were more about misplacing ‘it‘ into a fictional space and social context.

Publication “It“

I used small booklets and section-sewn binding to create this publication, with a gradient yellow background. I hope to reflect the complexity and dynamic of meaning through such arrangements and create a coherent visual language for the entire reading experience.