I recently purchased a book for my nephew, and not just any kind of book, but a popup book to learn his ABC's. I fell in love with this ABC3D book by Marion Bataille- which you can see demo'd here in this video. I tend to collect popup or moveable books(pull down,volvelles etc ) - I'm drawn to the interactivity the extra dimension affords much in the same way I'm drawn to flip books. In many arguable ways, the most trendiest and gratitutious implementations of Augmented Realitity are a digital homage the pop up book, adopting the user metaphor or simply trying to digitally recreate that experience such as this video. Don't expect a translation on that video - the last time I checked, Ikea was about as Scandinavian as I got. I've even seen this approach in music videos such as this one for ShitDisco.
Some amazing things have been done with paper as an artform - and yes, I do believe that movable books are considered art. Here are some of the more interesting ones I found:
Popup goes completely digital and right to the MIT lab where traditional pop up book mechanisms meet paper based electronics to create a highly dynamic and reactive experience integrating sound and light.
Despite what I consider a horribly annoying albeit suitable background track on this video, its pretty amazing to see a famous japanese buddist temple recreated in a pop up form using everyone's favourite - lego.
I have no words for this but awesome. Peter Callesen explores 2 and 3 dimensionality -transforming one of the most consumed forms of media - a simple piece of A4 paper into fragile paper sculpture scenes.
If you're going to destroy, okay transform, a book, then certainly there hasn't been anything more brillant than the work done by Brian Dettmer who creates 3d sculptures by carving into books.
Once again, paper is used to communicate the fragility of life in these delicate book cut sculptures.
Using construction paper as her medium, this artist makes some intricate paper sculptures. I would love to see these in person.
Completed as a school project, some of the intrictate white pop up work shown in this video are amazing - pieces I'd want to bastardize by opening up and mounting on my walls.
Encyclopedia Prehistorica Complete Collection
I've been silently coveting this series for sometime- if only for the amazing dinosaur book that has stunning imagery construction. Must fight urge to shop online at amazon....
