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A review by omnibozo22
Book from the Ground by Xu Bing
5.0
This book is a project where the process is more interesting and important than the content. Decades ago Xu Bing made an art installation called The Book from the Sky. He created thousands of "Chinese" characters that were not real characters. They looked and felt like real characters, but they carried no meaning beyond the elements of their shapes. He printed hundreds of pages of them, in a multitude of formats and filled the installation with iterations of them.
To follow up that project, he conceived of The Book from the Ground. This book has no word text. The story is told entirely through the use of icons and symbols commonly found online. The icons are arranged to tell the mundane story of one day in the life of an average office worker. It could be compared to Joyce's Ulysses. The cover doesn't convey the essence of the approach, so, when I post this on FB I'll include a random page from the book.
I'm working on a student activity that will use one sentence from the book (don't know which one, yet) to demonstrate the power of images, symbolism and metaphor in film. Yeah. Not entirely sure how I'll make that all come together, but getting there.
To follow up that project, he conceived of The Book from the Ground. This book has no word text. The story is told entirely through the use of icons and symbols commonly found online. The icons are arranged to tell the mundane story of one day in the life of an average office worker. It could be compared to Joyce's Ulysses. The cover doesn't convey the essence of the approach, so, when I post this on FB I'll include a random page from the book.
I'm working on a student activity that will use one sentence from the book (don't know which one, yet) to demonstrate the power of images, symbolism and metaphor in film. Yeah. Not entirely sure how I'll make that all come together, but getting there.