Reading. Goethes Faust.

Made with processing. Each cover (10 chapters) has been realized with processing, by visualizing its content in form of dots. There are white and red dots representing the light and dark vowels of each chapter. According to the german grammar the light vowels are those like – e and i –, while the dark vowels can be – a – o and u – for example. I analyzed the the entire content on these specific parameters by using processing and the result can be seen in those illustrative posters, where you also can measure the amount of words in a visual way, beginning in the left corner and ending up in the right.

A Modular book. Each chapter invites the reader to dive into the world of poetry in a more visual way than one is used to. Starting with classical reading end ending up in a modern messaging method, various types of reading are visually staged in these 10 chapters. The book itself is a leporello, where all chapters are interlocking with each other. After the first 5 parts, at the point of the climax, the reader has to turn the book the other way around and can experience the peripherie in a physical way.

Deep reading vs. brief reading. Nowadays there are various reading methods which were evolved over time with the invention of new technologies, such as smartphones or touch watches. This modular book makes use of some of them. There are some common and old ones like the classical or linear reading for example, we know from classic literature. There is also the selective “scanning-like” reading method we know from newspapers and websites and even non-linear reading methods we all use when we are searching for information for example in dictionaries or glossaries but also in form of notifications on our touch devices.

New approach. The other reading methods have been my own interpretation or maybe even suggestion in order to make a demanding text more easier to understand. Therefore I’ve used a more playful approach in order to make the text reception more fun and entertaining. Some of them make use of metaphors such as a performance on a stage. Here, the text dialogues behave like actors, in which the typesetting reveals the moods of the characters and their interpersonal relationships.

What if? How would it feel like, when each protagonist would get his / her own room, whereas you would read their thoughts exclusively? Therefore I used the tragedy of the Gretch as a special chapter, with four separate booklets in one – representing Margarete, Faust, Marthe and Mephistopheles as individuals. The single booklets can also interact with each other resulting in a quartet booklet system and recreating the whole conversation. A color concept (Goethes theory of colors) and a pagination are guiding the reader in order to find quickly the right passages.

Make the location tangible. One of the scenes is a very action-packed one. Here it comes to a murder, which happens on an empty street in the night. My editorial interpretation of this scene has been a leaning on a parchment scroll, where the bloody text walks along the nightly road.

Last but not least. My personal highlight was the attempt to transform the dialogues into a whats-app conversation or even a twitter post. Therefore I created profile pictures in form of initials and used the comments of the author as notifications or hashtags. Only the original content, no fake news.