HERE SAY

This is a book for lovers of language and those with a fancy to explore vast landscapes of meaning while playing with words in space. This flexible notion of a book with its movable devices, graphical calculations, and swirling windows of chance offers self-propelled encounters with the variables of communication through what is spoken and unspoken. HereSay explores how we speak, how we hear, and how we locate ourselves along the dimensions of what is true...or somewhere far from true. 

Discover diverse, interrelated readings of axiomatic volvelles, biaxial cartography and some particularly discerning randomography. 

Turning the volvelles offers the reader an opportunity to become a part of interpretive process of meaning by playing with eternal/circular changeability. The mutability of each element on the discs creates a new relationship of the variables. The reader, by revolving through the disks creates varying “pages” to be read.

THE FABULOUS NANCE O'BANION AND I MADE THIS BOOK TOGETHER.  Which could be a whole story in itself — but what I want to say about this book is that it is alive. When we take it into classrooms, it is a revelation to watch and listen as students grapple and create meaning and delightful or evocative insights with this book. I love to see students parse out shadings of significance, while questioning how language works and what to base interpretation of truth upon. 

I realize that the reason I like being a book artist and letterpress printer is that I can create visual and spatial contexts for words. Books allow for motion not only in space, but also in time. I like that a reader can decide how to move through the spaces and words of my books and discover for themselves their own way.  

HERESAY—HOW? The back of the book displays a schematic of the moving parts of the book and how they relate to each other in terms of who, what, where, when, how and why. 

WHERE: The book opens to a Map. Where do we stand? How do we determine our perspective and how can our point of view influence perception of truth or lie? The map is bordered with a biaxial spectrum of the oppositional points of truth and lie. The vertical (longitude) axis progresses incrementally through words moving from truth to half truth; the horizontal axis (latitude) spans terms ranging from half truth to lie. Imaginary lines intersect the words on the map.

Located  at intersections of words on the map, are a variety of personas, oh, such as -- wanderer, evader or conjurer. These personas, located at points of language confluence, illustrate how our protean sense of self can alter how we hear and speak along the spectrum of truth.

THE VOLVELLES: 
what, when, who, how & why

The ear structure with the volvelles can be lifted off the map and taken in hand. Each disk reveals the changing aspects affecting how we hear and what we say. Turning the disks reveals relationships between the variables of who, what, how and why content, making the reader an instigator in the creation of meaning.

H e r e S a y,  a collaboration

Casey Gardner, Set in Motion Press, Berkeley + Nance O’Banion, Permanent Press, Oakland

Description: Handbound Letterpress printed book with color xerographaphy and a  magnetized, removable volvelle structure.

Materials: Rives BFK, Canson, Elephant Hide, book cloth, grommets, magnets.

Process: Letterpress printed, photography, inkjet printed and color photocopy
Dimensions closed: 9”x 13” x .5”
Dimensions open: 13” x 27”
Edition size: 40  Price: 1200