Physical Catalog for an Auditory Exhibition
A catalog concept for a telephonic artwork, where the artwork consisted of spoken words and poems by various artists, experienced at random order. The most interesting aspect of this artwork is the diversity of artists that are represented and the fact that every visitor will have a different experience and will take different amounts of time to experience the artwork.
Time Equals Physical Page
Instead of simply listing the artists and their corresponding poems in an index, I thought it would be more meaningful if the catalogue can also serve as a visual translation of the artwork. By assigning a physical unit on a page for every second, each page can now represent a set period of time, in this case 2 minutes or 120 seconds.
The index spread also works as a contents page. For this catalogue, each artist, in alphabetical order, is assigned a color from the color spectrum.
The time next to the color = page number in the catalogue.
The Element of Chance
In the interactive piece, the order of poems is also random, just like the physical exhibit. I decided to use this element of chance to determine the order of the poems in the catalogue. The catalogue featured here is based on the order of poems on a specific date and time. What if a new catalogue is issued every month. The list of poems will be the same, however, the order will be different, resulting in a different combinations of colors in the catalogue.
Above: The spread at 4th hour. Below: All the poems combined add up to 8 hours, 27 minutes, 6 seconds of time.
Exploring Other Formats
As an additional exploration on the physical quantity of time, I recreated the same catalogue using half the page size of the original.
Theoretically, the content is still the same, but this time the entire 5 hours worth of poetry can fit in the palm of the hand. Does this change our impression and expectation of the exhibit? Does it feel shorter and less substantial?
Examining the poster and postcards formats, both are typical formats used for exhibits takeaways.
In the poster format, the spoken format of the exhibit is translated into columns of long continuous paragraphs of colors. Each poster equals 10 minutes of spoken poetry.
Work done as part of the MFA in Graphic Design Program at the Rhode Island School of Design.
Advisor: Bethany Johns, Head of Graduate Department of Graphic Design, RISD. Year: 2014
© 2022 Yoana Wiman