An Infinite History


An Infinite History is a collaborative project in which the content is gathered through a website and pub­­lished in a book. The principle is centered around the idea of transformation through percep­tion – inspi­red by Chinese Whispers.

infinite.selftitled.de

This project grew out of a reflection about the book of the future. The approach of the research was reffering to the comparison of the relationship between the book and the digital world and the art-historical relationship between painting and photography in the modern age. I looked for parallels and motfis that can be transferred from the art historical memory into the similar situation of influence and competition of new techno­logies to the “old” media in the present.

A center issue of the modern age in art was the question of reality. Before paintings transported reality or tried to copy it as perfect as possible. Now art created its own. What reality was for art, it is information for the book and the digital media. This leads to the question what is information and in which way it is modified and manipulated through the modern channels. So it deals with very contemporary and timeless topics like plagiarism and credibility of information in the same way art is does it with reality.

This project looks at issues involving the interaction and mutual influence of two media. It addresses the question to what extent a content changes in his testimony, credibility and value presented in different media. It also asks if it is possible to combine these from scratch differing approa­ches of communication to something new. It arose out of the conviction that new technical possibilities are not hazardous for a “classic” medium, but an opportunity for new per­spectives.

Therefore, this project seeks the benefits and strengths of both media ( books and digital ) to use and to link usefully. It also needs to be clarified that this project is intended to be an experiment, a source of inspiration and a step of development and in no way to show a problem solution to the book of the future.

At the Start-Page a visitor has the options to click the Start-Button for participating the story, view the published volumes oder get more information about the project. The background-color is calculated based on the number of contributions and moves slowly round the hsv color wheel.
After clicking the Start-Button the visitor will have one minute to make a drawing according to an instruction on the left. The instruction represents the description of the previous user.
After you have one minute to describe a drawing on the left in the textfield on the right. The drawing represents the drawing of the previous user.

Every volume is finished after two months.
The final stories are published in two books
– Story A and Story B.

The Books of Volume 1

Spreads of Volume 1 – Story A

Spreads of Volume 1 – Story B

The book has been longlisted at “Most Beautiful German Books” 2015.