Snag Book From The Ground: From Point To Point Compiled By Xu Bing Accessible In Publication
liked the idea of a book in symbols, no words, It would have been great if there was actually a story, The novelty wore off pretty early as there wasn't really anything keeping me hooked, Threefor the take on graphic novels, I'll give the author one star for what is a clever idea, . . a book with no words, only symbols and images telling the story, Except, there is no story, The main "character" there aren't really characters, either gets out of bed and then he takes a shower, and then he goes into his closet and decides between the blue shirt and the green shirt.
And then he drives to the office, and then he gets on the elevator, and then he goes to his bosses office, There are entire pages where the character plays video games and you see the little symbol of
Super Mario doing the stuff Super Mario does.
There are entire pages where he's looking at a menu deciding what to eat, Nothing interesting ever happens in this book, and once the novelty of reading symbols wears off, there is nothing left here of interest, No plot, no story, no characters, I "read" the whole thing hoping there would be something, There is nothing. Fun at first but not long term,
Its idea was so so creatively and smartly!! The process of story was good, Well It's literally cool! I feel the same way about this book as I felt about Horrorstor I really love the gimmick but the novelty wore off quite quickly and there wasn't much else about it to like.
Saying that, please don't let my opinion put you off picking this up, Again, just like with Horrorstor, I'm really in a minority here because most people seem to love it! كتاب دون كلمات استخدم المؤلف فيه أغلب الرموز المستخدمة في العالم الرقمي وعكس بها يوما في حياة رجل, .
استمتعت به ولكنني لن أقرأ شيئا كهذا إلا إذا كان موضوعا مبتكرا وغير اعتيادي. . I was skeptical at first, thinking it would be difficult to understand the story as it's a book written only using symbols and emojis.
However, it's really easy to read, I also laughed a few times, ", , !" No sé si cuenta como "leído", pero me encantó, Such an innovative book. This book is theversion of Esperantoa universal language that all can understand, They don't need any specialized training either, because they already know how to read everything in here,
Xu Bing's Book from the Ground is composed entirely of symbols, emojis, emoticons, whatever you want to call them, It's fascinating, though, because symbols have traditionally been quite arbitrary, but in this case they generally are clear in their meaning, This is somewhat troubling too because it demonstrates how we've been so socialized by the symbols of a mediasaturated world that surround us,
The book is a phenomenal feat on its own because it is able to portray a coherent narrative with no words, If I recall correctly, it also took Xu seven years to collect and organize the many symbols with his team, This alone makes the book worth it,
It's a quick read, though it takes some time to get the hang of it, Some of the aspects of the narrative are quite funny and somewhat absurd at times, Overall, it's somewhat mindblowing that this book even exists, It seems appropriate that an artist like Xu would be the one responsible for creating it, After all, a previous work, Book From the Sky, was composed only of characters that nobody would understand, It seems fitting that we would receive this book now, at the height of the smart phoneenabled symbol language that all of us already seem to know.
I would also highly recommend that you read this book concurrently with a companion volume also from MIT Press, The Book About Xu Bing's Book From The Ground.
Its additional insights make for the reading experience even more robust and thoughtprovoking, Fascinating concept and brilliant execution! But the story itself was rather mundanewhich, I guess, was the intention, I liked it but I think the premise doesn't make sense, and isn't necessarily that desirable, A book that everyone understands in the exact same way probably doesn't say that much Absolutely original graphic novel composed entirely of emojis and/wingdings or whatever.
A very simple day in the life of a young white collar worker waking up, going to the bathroom oh damn it looks like all the emoticons I embedded in a quick little review of this didn't come through and the whole thing was truncated.
Anyway, a charming little tale told in a new way that can probably be read by anyone regardless of language the author is Chinese.
I only failed to catch the drift of something once or twice, I'm sure there will be more of this sort of thing as the emoji options evolve, This book was interesting and unlike anything I have read before, It was interesting to see how well or poorly I was able to interpret some of the passages, However, it made my head spin at times, trying to decipher what the characters meant, I liked how different it was from any other book I have read, but I wouldn't read another book like this one again, A book without words, recounting a day in the life of an office worker, told completely in the symbols, icons, and logos of modern life.
Twenty years ago I made Book from the Sky, a book of illegible Chinese characters that no one could read, Now I have created Book from the Ground, a book that anyone can read,
Xu Bing
Following his classic work Book from the Sky, the Chinese artist Xu Bing presents a new graphic novelone composed entirely of symbols and icons that are universally understood.
Xu Bing spent seven years gathering materials, experimenting, revising, and arranging thousands of pictograms to construct the narrative of Book from the Ground.
The result is a readable story without words, an account of twentyfour hours in the life of "Mr, Black," a typical urban whitecollar worker,
Our protagonist's day begins with wakeup calls from a nearby bird and his bedside alarm clock it continues through toothbrushing, coffeemaking, TVwatching, and catfeeding.
He commutes to his job on the subway, works in his office, ponders various fastfood options for lunch, waits in line for the bathroom, daydreams, sends flowers, socializes after work, goes home, kills a mosquito, goes to bed, sleeps, and gets up the next morning to do it all over again.
His day is recounted with meticulous and intimate detail, and reads like a postmodern, posttextual riff on James Joyce's account of Bloom's peregrinations in Ulysses.
But Xu Bing's narrative, using an exclusively visual language, could be published anywhere, without translation or explication anyone with experience in contemporary lifeanyone who has internalized the icons and logos of modernity, from smiley faces to transit maps to menuscan understand it.
This book is a project where the process is more interesting and important than the content, Decades ago Xu Bing made an art installation called The Book from the Sky, He created thousands of "Chinese" characters that were not real characters, They looked and felt like real characters, but they carried no meaning beyond the elements of their shapes, He printed hundreds of pages of them, in a multitude of formats and filled the installation with iterations of them,
To follow up that project, he conceived of The Book from the Ground, This book has no word text, The story is told entirely through the use of icons and symbols commonly found online, The icons are arranged to tell the mundane story of one day in the life of an average office worker, It could be compared to Joyce's Ulysses, The cover doesn't convey the essence of the approach, so, when I post this on FB I'll include a random page from the book.
I'm working on a student activity that will use one sentence from the book don't know which one, yet to demonstrate the power of images, symbolism and metaphor in film.
Yeah. Not entirely sure how I'll make that all come together, but getting there, The author narrates herehours in the life of a white collar, From one morning to the next, The story in itself is very basic, but not without humour,
What is really interesting about this book is not the story itself, but how it is told, Not a single word, only pictures, It brings us back to the roots of writting,
I am not surprised that it is a Chinese who wrote this book, After all, it is exactly like this that the Chinese written language started, with pictures representing ideas, These pictures than got more and more complex, representing more and more complex ideas, in order to give Chinese as we know it, Therefore I am wondering what level of complexity and abstraction we can reach, but at the same time keeping the language understandable by all, even those who never studied it What pictures are understandable by all What ideas are really universal Рада, що ця книжка є з простої причини: незважаючи на всі намагання спростити і замінити мову, цього поки нікому не вдалося.
Нам доведеться і далі шукати способи порозуміння, які не есперанто і не емодзі. A total delight Interesante propuesta: un libro sin palabras, sin letras, Una historia contada solamente con emoticonos, simbolos, logos, etc,
Muy original. Mildly diverting.
It's a story told in icons, and there's really not much beyond that, If I tried to write a story using icons then I expect I would end up with something vaguely similar, Which is to say, Xu Bing completely fails to transcend the medium, There are a couple of passable jokes, but that's about as clever as it gets,
The experience of reading a story in icons is interesting, It was more mentally straining than I expected, Less like reading a picture book and more like solving a rebus puzzle, It rather made me appreciate the existence of words, I also found myself compelled to narrate the action aloud, first in prose and then in song, Perhaps my brain didn't like the word vacuum, Very interesting read. Felt like I experienced a new kind of thing, I recommend this simply for it's unique, and strangely engaging story, It's a simple plot, but I kept turning the pages, Read it all in one sitting, I heard about this book on "The Secret History of Writing" a BBCshow I would highly recommend, and was fascinated by the idea, so of course, I had to buy it.
The idea here is that by using emojis, wingdings, logos and other images, a story can be told that anyone can read.
And it worked.
Okay, I can't honestly say that I recognised every symbol or was able to decipher every meaning, but I certainly got enough to know what was going on.
Basically. we met Mr Black on his waking up and getting ready for work, and all the 'adventures' he has over the nexthours, What happens are everyday activities, but if any day had all of them that would be one hell of a day, which is precisely what Mr Black faces.
It's not the best book I'll ever read, but as an exercise in communication between two people who do not know each other and do not speak the same language, it was was very credible.
Would recommend. Ідея цікава: написати книгу овністю з символів. Видно, що автор не письменник, а людина однієї ідеї. Але я не знаю як можна було це написати зароків, це дуже проста історія, яку можна було написати за день. Ми з друзями граємо в настолку Геометрія Уяви де розігруються ще складніші баталії з символів. Тут немає особливої історії, простогодини чувака, який йде в офіс, вирішує справи, вибирає, що їсти, спілкується з друзями і тд. Автор каже, що мова універсальна, але як на мене це дуже китайська книга з китайськими реаліями, від емоджі, які використовують китайці, доповерху, де працює герой, до туалетних подробиць, до стереотипів щодо чоловіків/жінок, до китайських месенджерів. Був лише один момент, який прям змусив зацікавитись: персонаж вибирає книги в подарунок друзям, і одна з книг, це книга яку тримаєш у руках. Жаль, що автор не зробив сюжет цікавішим. Відгадувати символи і радіти цікавим способам зображення доволі цікаво, але не думаю, що читатиму ще раз. .