Simmer
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Handmade AR Artist Book, 2019
Design + Paper Engineering: Rebecca Rouse Text + Augmented Reality: Lissa Holloway-Attaway Music: Brendan Padgett November 20-22, ICIDS International Conference for Interactive Digital Storytelling Juried Art Exhibition, Salt Lake City, Utah *Winner, ICIDS Art Exhibition Excellence in Innovation Award |
Simmer is entirely handmade two-sided artist book and AR (augmented reality) application that explores and expands John Cheever's classic short story, "The Swimmer" (1964). While Cheever's landmark story crafts an expert portrayal of its protagonist, narcissistic Ned Merrill, Ned's wife (Lucinda) and four unnamed daughters are left unexplored. While this narrow focus is appropriate for Cheever's text, this absence can also be an invitation to explore the ways in which the emotional violence and pain wrought by a narcissistic person (Ned) resonates through the family. This is the focus of Simmer.
The first side of Simmer opens as a linear accordion fold book and presents a re-telling of Ned's story, Collage elements begin as more naturalistic representations at the left of the panorama, but transition to more surreal as the reader progresses. Cutup quotations from Cheever's original text are woven into the imagery, often filling the empty swimming pools that dot the landscape. A red thread is sewn through the book, drawing suggestive connections between houses and people in the Westchester county suburb, all lounging in a seemingly eternal cocktail hour, poolside.
Each two-page spread of the accordion panorama acts as a trigger image for the accompanying AR app, calling up atmospheric music and voiced dialogue. Characters in Ned's world react to his passage across the page, welcoming him, offering him drinks, and threatening to reveal dark secrets. A chill bossa nova soundtrack becomes more pensive as the reader moves across the pages.
Turning the book inside out, a dollhouse structure emerges. The nonlinear narrative of the house space is pieced together through the reader's exploration, by manipulating a variety of traditional pop-up and movable elements (paper dolls, animated flip book, miniature book, tunnel book, flaps, fold-out map painted with thermo-chromic paint that responds to heat, revealing hidden text when touched by the reader.) Each of these elements is also tracked by the AR app to reveal audio, this time voiced by Lucinda, Ned's wife, as she tells her side of the story. Miniature LPs play musical themes for the female characters, deconstructed and introspective inversions of the cheery music from the pool party side of the book.
The red thread sewn through the other side of the book emerges in the house through Lucinda's writing desk, as the thread in the hand-sewn binding of a miniature book of poetry. As Lucinda's experience is revealed, we learn the devastating impact Ned's narcissism has had on her and the family. Lucinda is complex, however, and far from powerless, revealing dark secrets of her own as well. What simmers bubbles up, and invites the reader to explore the raw edges of humanity within us all.
The first side of Simmer opens as a linear accordion fold book and presents a re-telling of Ned's story, Collage elements begin as more naturalistic representations at the left of the panorama, but transition to more surreal as the reader progresses. Cutup quotations from Cheever's original text are woven into the imagery, often filling the empty swimming pools that dot the landscape. A red thread is sewn through the book, drawing suggestive connections between houses and people in the Westchester county suburb, all lounging in a seemingly eternal cocktail hour, poolside.
Each two-page spread of the accordion panorama acts as a trigger image for the accompanying AR app, calling up atmospheric music and voiced dialogue. Characters in Ned's world react to his passage across the page, welcoming him, offering him drinks, and threatening to reveal dark secrets. A chill bossa nova soundtrack becomes more pensive as the reader moves across the pages.
Turning the book inside out, a dollhouse structure emerges. The nonlinear narrative of the house space is pieced together through the reader's exploration, by manipulating a variety of traditional pop-up and movable elements (paper dolls, animated flip book, miniature book, tunnel book, flaps, fold-out map painted with thermo-chromic paint that responds to heat, revealing hidden text when touched by the reader.) Each of these elements is also tracked by the AR app to reveal audio, this time voiced by Lucinda, Ned's wife, as she tells her side of the story. Miniature LPs play musical themes for the female characters, deconstructed and introspective inversions of the cheery music from the pool party side of the book.
The red thread sewn through the other side of the book emerges in the house through Lucinda's writing desk, as the thread in the hand-sewn binding of a miniature book of poetry. As Lucinda's experience is revealed, we learn the devastating impact Ned's narcissism has had on her and the family. Lucinda is complex, however, and far from powerless, revealing dark secrets of her own as well. What simmers bubbles up, and invites the reader to explore the raw edges of humanity within us all.
The Golden Key Variations
Handmade Mixed Media Pop-Up Book, 2019
Author, Illustrator, and Paper Engineer: Rebecca Rouse
May 22 - June 2, Changing Climates exhibition
Karlskrona Marine Museum, Karlskrona, Sweden
What new fairy tales will be written in the coming era of Climate Change? Taking inspiration from the Grimm Brothers' story The Golden Key, which has a unique narrative structure with an open ending that calls out to the reader to participate in imagining the final scene on their own, The Golden Key Variations traces the influence of the Grimm tale across three classic stories (Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, and The Golden Key by George Macdonald). The book then shifts to imagine four new fairy tales from the speculative future, set in a post-Climate Migration world.
A set of characters navigate the new challenges in this coming world including rising sea levels, deforestation, toxic algae, extinction, and political apathy. The figure of the golden key acts as an enigmatic metaphor, wielded with wisdom by children, but less well used by adult characters. The book ends with a message of hope for our future, suggesting we look for inspiration to children such as Greta Thunberg, Swedish Climate Activist. On another level, the book invites us to reflect on the meaning of participation and interactivity in the reading experience in our digital age, and builds on the centuries-long history of movable book design.
Interactive elements in The Golden Key Variations include traditionally paper engineered movable book flaps, pockets, fold-outs, and 3D pop-ups, as well as a peep show, flip book, thaumatrope, and embedded musical sound chip.
Special thanks to Sandra Rouse, for sharing her white line woodblock test prints for The Secret Garden pages. Thanks to Brendan Padgett for composing and editing the music for the final page. Thanks also to Moa Andersson and Jefferson Keilwagen for their kind help and feedback.
Author, Illustrator, and Paper Engineer: Rebecca Rouse
May 22 - June 2, Changing Climates exhibition
Karlskrona Marine Museum, Karlskrona, Sweden
What new fairy tales will be written in the coming era of Climate Change? Taking inspiration from the Grimm Brothers' story The Golden Key, which has a unique narrative structure with an open ending that calls out to the reader to participate in imagining the final scene on their own, The Golden Key Variations traces the influence of the Grimm tale across three classic stories (Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, and The Golden Key by George Macdonald). The book then shifts to imagine four new fairy tales from the speculative future, set in a post-Climate Migration world.
A set of characters navigate the new challenges in this coming world including rising sea levels, deforestation, toxic algae, extinction, and political apathy. The figure of the golden key acts as an enigmatic metaphor, wielded with wisdom by children, but less well used by adult characters. The book ends with a message of hope for our future, suggesting we look for inspiration to children such as Greta Thunberg, Swedish Climate Activist. On another level, the book invites us to reflect on the meaning of participation and interactivity in the reading experience in our digital age, and builds on the centuries-long history of movable book design.
Interactive elements in The Golden Key Variations include traditionally paper engineered movable book flaps, pockets, fold-outs, and 3D pop-ups, as well as a peep show, flip book, thaumatrope, and embedded musical sound chip.
Special thanks to Sandra Rouse, for sharing her white line woodblock test prints for The Secret Garden pages. Thanks to Brendan Padgett for composing and editing the music for the final page. Thanks also to Moa Andersson and Jefferson Keilwagen for their kind help and feedback.
