ON PAMPHLETTERING

A new spatial context for reading written text, why not produce a short-run pamphlet or essay, printed on the surface of an inflatable beach ball? A project that tends to my curiosity / concern for the spatial aspect of text in space.

With a tag line "Just puff and peruse" underpinning the thought process, I was enthused by the idea of creating what would essentially begin as a 2-dimensional, flat-packed reading material which a reader would then self inflate and turn into a 3-dimensional object for textual consumption.

When first thinking about it, the beach ball pamphlet's written contents came secondary to the beach ball format itself. However, one possible factor I considered in order for the textual aspect to inter-act with the spatial dimensions of the object were for the text - whatever this great text might be - to be purposefully and artfully never ending.

Imagining the text to be printed in a traditional page format across each of the individual plastic segments that make up the material of the beach-ball, the opening line would begin without an upper case demarcation, and the final line - reached after having read round the ball by rotating it 360 degrees - would finish without punctuation, thereby feeding into the original first-line so as to create an endless literary continuity.

Otherwise, if I were not limited by layout in order to indulge such a small grammatical gimmick, the surface of the ball could be used to host images and articles, inter-linked and inter-mingled at any angle or rotation so that the act of reading would be delineated. Having to play with the beach ball by spinning it around would aid your reading experience.

[Sketch by Luke 'Curtis' Collins]

Finally, as an image of absurdity in our ever increasingly absurd world, the idea of selling such a product as an alternative to a commuter newspaper (say for ¥400 on a station platform) conjured up the great situation in my mind where a carriage load of neck-tied business men would be given creative license to undermine their self-enforced seriousness and indulge their inner infant by being able to read something interesting on a beach ball before being done with it and having a quick game of keepy-uppy or catch with the person sitting across from them. Admittedly, the task of the train serviceman having to clear up all the discarded beach ball pamphlets dumped in the static carriage at the station terminus might get tiresome fast, but the extra money spent on cleaning staff would surely be recouped by the money saved on anxiety pills that otherwise straight-jacketed city slickers would have turned to by middle age had they not let out their pent up frustrations with what I have now decided would act as beach ball therapy!