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Play, download and edit the free video Analog Interactive Book Project: MEGAFAUNA OF THE CENOZOIC ERA.

The project deals with a less known field of book design and the use of the ombro analogue interactive technique in scientific literary illustration. As regards the content, the project explores an interactive literary project including a comprehensive overview of extinct giant mammals that lived in the Cenozoic era.

The objective of the literary project is the study of the ombro technique, while its practical part includes an encyclopaedic overview of the Cenozoic megafauna in the form of a complete literary project containing interactive scientific illustrations. The book thus touches the field of scientific illustration. It contains interactive analogue illustrations in the ombro technique enabling a movable presentation of certain characteristics, activities, states and lives of these animals. The aim was to produce a literary project consisting of 19 scientific illustrations made with the transfer printmaking technique and a pencil, which would be complemented with the results of the study of the ombro analogue interactive technique.

This is a subject that is not popularized and has not been discussed much in the literature. Therefore, the work explores this very marginal field of megafauna in the Cenozoic geological era.

The book provides the reader with an insight into a series of scientific illustrations of animals, supplemented with infographics, and a series of interactive illustrations where individual pages represent the time which has yet to come and where the reader has the opportunity to construct and deconstruct the story through time.

The illustration of each animal is subjected to a certain degree of objectivity and realistic accuracy; however, there is a certain degree of authorial freedom in the interpretation.

The book consists of two parts, whereby the first part includes a static drawing, while the second one complements the first using the ombro technique and thus breathing life into drawings and enabling them to move.

This is, however, an unconventional book containing a refined artistic language which, through its whiteness, allows the reader to develop their own interpretation unburdened by the abundance of colours and shapes.

The book is in the form of a timeline where the illustrations extend over the folding pages, since this is the only meaningful method of presenting the animal in a balanced, dynamic manner. Moreover, such a method of printing evokes the connotation of time on its own. The decision was additionally reinforced by the use of the ombro technique which enables the reader to slide the grid over the format and thus travel through the evolution of these animals without interruptions.

The technique is suitable for the enrichment and upgrade of a book illustration into an interactive analogue illustration. The project examines the question of what makes a book interactive and how this “old” medium can compete with its digital counterparts. The printed book is namely trying to develop new mechanisms of attracting readers. When it comes to storytelling through illustration, the use of analogue interactivity has a potential to facilitate better interaction and enhance originality.

Illustration is the only discipline within the realm of visual arts and communications that explains information in such a manner. Much of what is seen by way of this contextual domain is the creation and interpretation of new knowledge. The insatiable need within society to obtain knowledge and the progress of science, technology and culture will ensure that the illustration practice within the context of visual communications will only gain in its importance.

In today’s technology world, there are a lot of opportunities for the printed book to be interactive, especially if it is supplemented with digital technologies or rather digital interfaces, such as QR codes and various mobile applications. I am mostly interested in the analogue interactivity, which is the interactivity limited to a drawing or rather an illustration with an analogue interface – in this case, a sheet – and user interaction.

Such interactivity enhances collaboration between the illustrator or illustration and the reader by giving the latter more opportunity to contribute to the creation of the story. By bringing this type of analogue interactivity back to life, the book can also be seen as homage to the intimate relation between the image and movement. A book illustrated in such a manner may be an interactive ménage à trois of imagination of first the author and the illustration, and then also of the reader and the image. - Maša P. Žmitek

For more info contact: [email protected] / IG @masazmitek

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