REFRAMING STORY
Personal Research — Fall 2021
Personal Research — Fall 2021
Book Design ︎︎︎ Experimental
Reframing Story is an experimental publication design. The work draws inspiration from Rashomon, the movie filmed by Akira Kurosawa in 1950. Rashomon digs into how truth is affected and reshaped by different perspectives through four characters’ narration of a murder. The divergence between with various characters’ perspectives dictates the film’s unusual plot structure, which unfolds several different versions of the central tale, one by one.
After watching the movie Rashomon, it reminded me of the question: Are the images we see real, or accu-rate? Author, W.J.T Mitchell analyzes Wittgenstei’s theory of mental images and summarized in a simple way: when a person sees an object, the brain projects and depicts it and creates a new mental image that may or may not be the same as the actual object. The point of this theory is that we as observers should not ignore the influence of mental images on our reading of images. Discussing mental images and physical images on an equal level helps us understand them.
So for this project, my research was aimed at gaining a deeper understanding of how each person imagines the picture differently through interaction. First, I created various games that can collect stories. Next, I invited nearly 20 friends, family members, and classmates to test the game with me. Then in the final design, I focused on three games with significant effects.
The first game is called “Expansion.” Each player receives a picture and then creates a story based on this single picture.
The second game is called “Sequence” and has two parts. In the first part, each player receives a combination of three pictures in a fixed order and creates a story based on this combination. In the second part, each player changes the order of these three pictures and completes the story based on the new order.
The third game is called “Circumscription.” Each player receives a combination of four pictures in a fixed order, and each picture starts with a sentence. Players need to use these four beginning sentences then to create a complete story.
Reframing Story is an experimental publication design. The work draws inspiration from Rashomon, the movie filmed by Akira Kurosawa in 1950. Rashomon digs into how truth is affected and reshaped by different perspectives through four characters’ narration of a murder. The divergence between with various characters’ perspectives dictates the film’s unusual plot structure, which unfolds several different versions of the central tale, one by one.
After watching the movie Rashomon, it reminded me of the question: Are the images we see real, or accu-rate? Author, W.J.T Mitchell analyzes Wittgenstei’s theory of mental images and summarized in a simple way: when a person sees an object, the brain projects and depicts it and creates a new mental image that may or may not be the same as the actual object. The point of this theory is that we as observers should not ignore the influence of mental images on our reading of images. Discussing mental images and physical images on an equal level helps us understand them.
So for this project, my research was aimed at gaining a deeper understanding of how each person imagines the picture differently through interaction. First, I created various games that can collect stories. Next, I invited nearly 20 friends, family members, and classmates to test the game with me. Then in the final design, I focused on three games with significant effects.
The first game is called “Expansion.” Each player receives a picture and then creates a story based on this single picture.
The second game is called “Sequence” and has two parts. In the first part, each player receives a combination of three pictures in a fixed order and creates a story based on this combination. In the second part, each player changes the order of these three pictures and completes the story based on the new order.
The third game is called “Circumscription.” Each player receives a combination of four pictures in a fixed order, and each picture starts with a sentence. Players need to use these four beginning sentences then to create a complete story.
