Medium: Found medical dicitionary Pages: Variable Technique: Cut pages Edition: Unique
Sub-type: Altered book Theme(s): Incomprehensible texts and their frustration. Reading
Place publication: Johannesburg Publisher: The artist Exhibition 2017
Reference note: A medical dictionary which has been altered so that the pages spiral out of the book and can no longer be read.
We use words to make sense of the word. The book that I have made is a way of physically representing what happens when a person is unable to comprehend the words in the text that they are reading. To comprehend a text the reader must be able to decode the letters to form words and then make associations with those words to create meaning. The words help to create concepts in the reader’s mind. If there are too many words that the reader cannot comprehend while reading, she is unable to create concepts and so is unable to comprehend the text. Without comprehension the reading experience is meaningless and the reader becomes confused and often frustrated.
This book is a metaphor for the state of frustration and chaos a person feels when they cannot comprehend a text.
Exhibition notes: ‘Booknesses: Contemporary South African Artist's Books’.