Book-making again!

Today I continued my book-making (or destroying - you can look at it either way) on The Devil Wears Prada. Here is a picture of my progress at the time class started (before I did any work on it today).

As you can see from the above photo, I had already done some page-ripping the last class I worked on it. I began by ripping out three strips from one page, and then two strips from the next. This gave the book an interesting effect: part of the text from different pages could be seen even when the book was opened to only one page. Thus, one could see two, three, four, and maybe even five pages and pieces of text from those pages at one time.

This picture is one taken from my point of view as I ripped the book's pages. I had to hold the page while I ripped strips off of it.

I found that I really liked the randomness of the rips; each strip would be a different size and shape, and each time I ripped a page, new shapes would emerge. I couldn't control the ripping very well, as the pages were really thin, but I actually found this uncontrollable randomness to add to the effect of the ripped pages. Each page and each strip of page became a "happy accident."

The two photos above show how different page rips could appear. Each rip has a unique size and shape that dictates how the page looks at the end, and ultimately how the book will appear at the end.

At times I noticed that in my accidental and random ripping, I had left unobscured an important part of the book.

In this picture, for example, you can see that the title of the book, The Devil Wears Prada, was (unintentionally) left unripped. Even more interesting, you could see the title through the rips of the other pages surrounding it. Thus, I accidentally left an important facet of the book (its title) visible.

Similarly, here I unintentionally left the number of the first chapter visible, and not ripped up. This is an important part of the book because it signals to the reader where to begin.

During the class, I realized that I was amassing a lot of scraps that were ripped out of the book. Here is a picture of the book covered by the scraps that were torn from it.

Also during the class, I had the idea of using a fan to blow the pages back and forth, since I think this would create a neat effect with all the ripped pages floating around in the air. Hopefully soon I will be able to use a fan to achieve this effect. If I can, I will film it and post it!