WHAT IF SOMEONE WAS ASKING YOU TO VISUALLY REPRESENT A PIECE OF TEXT?
Created by Camille Obligis
"After the revolutionary period of the 'fifties and 'sixties, society re-grouped itself, as always, into high, middle and low"
My task was to solve the problem of how to visually represent and explain a text through a sequence of graphic visuals: 6 hand-drawn images & 1 digital image. This sentence comes from George Orwell's book '1984', a famous dystopian book that was banned for some time. Through my research, I discovered that the author' style of writing was simple and minimal "if it is possible to cut a word out always cut it out". Yet, the author used lots of double-thinking in his book, such as 'War is Peace'. In order to portray this paradoxical rationalising each sequence of images are in two parts; one textured and busy side and one minimal side.
I destructed the sentence and researched information about the book but also outside of the author's creation. How do you represent a banned book? How do you represent the invention of the pill in the 50s? Which shape represents the best the revolution? How do you draw "War is peace"? How do you show the death of Martin Luther King and JF Kennedy? How to visualise class stratification?
After a thorough research, I decided on 6 themes characterised in distinct hand-drawn pieces. They are displayed in a book as a salutation to George Orwell. The digital visual is a representation of the 6 acts, therefore best placed with one half on the front cover and one half on the back cover.
x 1984, War is Peace
x 1984, George Orwell, banned book
x Class stratification, high middle and low
x The 50s
x The 60s
x The revolutionary period