PROJECT
Semester project @ FH Vorarlberg
SKILLS
Concept, Programming, Graphic design
YEAR
2014
Can a program generate visuals that tell us something about the content of a book?
Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories
Poe’s short stories are masterpieces of the mystery genre. Although they are self-contained, when you read them you can still recognize the connections and similarities between the individual stories. Recurring themes and motifs such as being buried alive, hatred and murder are just as striking as obvious parallels to his personal life.
Book cover as visualization of the content
Is there a way to make these connections visible in the form of generative graphics? The book covers should allow the reader to see the story before they have read it. The design of the cover motif and choice of colour also makes it possible to arrange the books either by content or by publication date: Short stories that deal with the same content are similar in design. The colours of the individual covers together form a colour gradient which results in a chronological order.
Programming
The final work was created in Processing and Nodebox. Each short story is represented by a simple path graphic, which is the main motif for the cover. For each motif / theme I wrote a separate program that changes this path in a different way. Depending on how much a motif / theme applies to the short story, the stronger the effect of this program on the path. So for each short story several paths were created, which were put on top of each other.