EXPERIMENT LOG — Book Brief 6

Aims

Responding to Book Brief 6: How might I design a reading experience for a book? 
How might I represent the passing of time(one day) alongside the narrative of the book to bring the reader in further? 

Precedents / context

I've been reading Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (1925). The entire book is set in one day and it follows different characters throughout London, but a constant throughout is time, and there are references to Big Ben chiming. It's not directly related to my research area but I have been thinking about it and exploring time. I also thought it was interesting to explore materially. 

Process / methods

• Sketches exploring the possibilities of a book format using cut outs and thread. How could I represent/mimic the repetitive, cyclic nature of time? 
• Thinking about how to limit the reader's access to the book in relation to the time passing. Was there a way to stop them from flicking back... to experience the time in the novel as the characters did, as finite?
• Also thinking about time and clocks, which led to these circle ideas. 

• Went ahead with the sketch above, right-hand side. I thought about how to track the time as you were reading, a sort of clock-as book. 
• Dimensions were decided by the scrap paper I had , but I like the long dimensions, that do bring focus to the circles. Landscape, it also reminds me of those monthly flip calendars. 
• Made a tracing paper template of 12 circles that get progressively bigger (as a way to identify the hour/direction of time). The plan was to cut them out, trace them onto the pages of the book and cut those out. 

• Once cut out, I attached thread to the first page's circle, looped it over and through the next and so on. I tried different ways to do this, but this was the most restrictive in "binding" the pages together. 

• Cut thread when there was enough for the book to lie flat on each spread.  

Reflection on action

• I was really excited to start, but as I went through the process it seemed a bit pointless. 
• Everything went as planned except that I drew one circle too many and didn't realise until the end, which threw the incremental progression off, but it's not too noticeable.
• I think it was that didn't feel like there was room to suddenly change course and keep thinking through making. 

Reflection for action

• I need to revisit my research topic, any vague contextual anchor I have so far, and look further. Find material that I have a clear connection to, that incites thinking and experimentation. 
• I think it would also be helpful for me to keep these experiments very rough, so that I feel able to change / abandon it if it's not working. To not feel so precious about it! 

References Woolf, V. (1925). Mrs Dalloway. Hogarth Press.