A Tale As Old as Time
INTRODUCTION
During my exchange in Hongik University, we were tasked to choose something to archive. We then had to create:
1) a visual essay (a book using only images)
2) an anthology (a book using only text).
3) a form of alternative publishing for our chosen topic
4) a final book summing up our topic.
My chosen topic was time. I wanted to archive how people understand and experience time.
Time is a universal condition, we all understand time by looking at a clock. But why does time
feel both slow and fast? If the time we feel is subjective, can there ever be an accurate depiction
of time? When do we want to slow time down and when do we hope for time to move faster?
What does time say about the human condition?
1. VISUAL ESSAY
For the visual essay, I created a flip book where the user can flip forwards to go towards the future, or flip backwards to turn back time and return to the past.
How the user chooses to interact with the book is representative of how felt time differs across people. Depending on how the users interact with the book and their speed of flipping the pages, the time perceived is different for each person. Someone could flip to the end of the book and see it as an end (linear perception of time), or flip back to the start and play it over again (cyclical perception of time). Alternatively, instead of flipping, they might choose to stay on one page and focus on images and events (polychronic, event-based p-time approach).
2. ANTHOLOGY
For the anthology, I sourced quotes from books that specifically mentioned the time and arranged them in a clock formation with each quote moving clockwise. The gradient in the background also shows the change in time from day to night.
Although the quotes were arranged to follow the clock numbers, each quote reveal how characters in the novels are deeply confused by time. Some are uncertain if the time stated on the clock is the actual time, others feel that time has stopped, or is moving faster or slowing down.
3. ALTERNATIVE PUBLISHING
** This video has been sped up for demonstration purposes
For alternative publishing, I created several clock animations with After Effects. Each clock shows a different expression of time.
This animation will later be used for the landing page of the digital archive website.
4. FINAL BOOK (+ WEBSITE)
The final book is titled A Tale as Old as Time. It is a 126- page archive of humanity’s relationship with time, told via the lens of art, literature, film, songs, essays, internet posts, advertisements etc.
This book was printed with 80g/m² and 120g/ m² 인의예지 구름 paper from 인더페이퍼 을지로, and uses exposed spine binding. The title on the cover uses a custom serif typeface and is printed with white ink on black paper.
This book is the first and only edition printed.
The book uses a vertical index on the left for readers to navigate each chapter easily,
The horizontal line across each page marks the year of each entry.
WEBSITE
A digital version of the archive was also created with Adobe XD, using the earlier animation.
If the permalink of the gif and XD page fails to load, you can look at every page in full screen here.
