Book Intervention Sketchbook
by Johan Lindqvist
The Brief Pick out any book of your liking and intervene with it. Create an art piece that derives in some way from the books story or anything you associate with the book.
A New Sequence Geometry I was searcing high and low through the local charity shops in order to find a book suitable for me. I struggled to find something inspiring until it finally found me. I stumbled upon this old school book on geometry from the 50’s. It contains a lot of beautiful illustrations of shapes, angels and lines. It really attracted me as a graphic designer who really apprecieates minimalistic geometrical design.
Initial ideas My first attempts to come up with ideas started with simple sketching and writing in my sketchbook. I started a fictional conversation with the “spirit” of the book in order to ignite an idea. This initially felt very ridicilous but I soon realized it was very helpful. The triangle, square and circle are the basic shapes in geometry and by “speaking” with them I got a lot of inspiration.
Research Alongside with the sketching I read more about the history of geometry and used Pinterest a lot in order to find further inspiration.
Further sketching
The thoughts generating my final idea When I learned that geometry used to be a knowledge thaught exclusively among fortunate men like the pharaos and high priests in ancient egypt I realized something. Gemotry used to be the language of god. It was only the most holiest people that understood geometry and they used their knowledge to build the pyramids and get closer to god. Geometry is found in nature, in space, in how the world works. Geometry is a pair of glasses you can look at the world through and see new things.
“The all-seeing eye”
The idea My art piece is an all seeing eye created from dozens of illustrations cut out from the school book. It is meant to symbolise how religion and the science in the form of geometry is very intertwined. I have riddled the art piece with small hidden messages, some with deep meaning, others almost pointless. I hope that the viewers can have a fictional discussion with my art piece just as I did in the process of creating it.
Johan Lindqivst | Advanced Visual Creativity | UWS 2013