A Romance of Many Dimensions

I've just had a piece of work (Flatland) entered for this years ISTD 2011 project 05. The brief was to execute a proposal for a reinterpretation of an existing book ‘Flatland by Edwin A. Abbott’ the design should be typographically based but challenge the standard conventions of ‘a book’. at least one chapter is to be produced, with indications of how the rest of the book would appear.

‘Flatland’ was first published in 1884. the story is told pseudonymously by a character (a square) who inhabits a two dimensional world. The book is formed of two parts; the first details the inhabitants, climate, customs, and history of this strange environment. The second part recounts the adventures of the square character as he encounters other worlds of different dimensions.

The environment of Flatland is very prescriptive. as there is no vertical, views of anything are restricted to straight lines. The male inhabitants are all regular sided geometric shapes, with an under class of irregular triangles. There is a strict class system which corresponds to the number of sides a regular shaped character possesses. The ruling classes have many hundreds of sides, rendering them almost circular. Colour has been outlawed but the inhabitants have a luminescence. The population of ‘Flatland’ have developed their senses so that they can identify each other by sound, touch, or sight. Because of their geometric configuration they are able to judge by feeling any angle, the format of their countrymen. Similarly, they are able to judge a shape by looking at the apex of an angle and judging the rate at which the sides fade from view.

For my interpretation, I wanted to devise a language which could be deciphered by an inhabitant of ‘flatland’. Normal typographic conventions are obviously useless, as they are incapable of viewing anything from above. I reasoned that a language formed of the geometric shapes they encounter every day would be an obvious route of investigation. Based on similar principals to morse code, I developed an alphabet based on combinations of five regular shapes. I chose five shapes so that no single character featured more than two shapes which makes the scale less unwieldy. Numbers were to be formed of combinations of irregular triangles (again, any inhabitant of ‘Flatland’ is well versed in judging the formation of these shapes). Punctuation was to be formed of a series of short or long dashes.

We are as much prisoners of our own three dimensional world as ‘Flatlanders’ are of theirs. Therefore I needed to devise a way of rendering this geometric matrix readable in a two dimensional environment. I propose that a single line of text, once translated into this geometric language and cut out of a suitable material, if viewed ‘edge-on’ would be readily identifiable in ‘flatland’.

The size and scale of the piece was dictated by the character count of the first (sample) chapter. I needed the size of the individual characters to be reasonably substantial, with a cap height of 10mm so that they could be easily identified from a distance. As ‘Flatlanders’ would only be able to view single lines, I needed the line length to be reasonably long. I also wanted the overall shape of the piece to conform to the ‘Flatland’ regular geometric aesthetic.

Edge-lit perspex would afford the luminescence I require to approximate the shadow less, colourless ‘flatland’ environment. Therefore my solution consists of a 1200mm x 1200mm neutral coloured panel into which 71 meter long strips of characters has been inserted edge-on. The characters are laser cut from 3mm sheets of clear, cast acrylic. a light source placed behind the panel will cause the edges of the characters to glow.

This installation piece would be viewed in a gallery or similar environment. Subsequent chapters would each have their own separate panel. Viewing the installation requires a certain restriction of the viewers eye line to approximate the two dimensional flatland environment. Therefor a 1200mm high platform is to be placed in front of the piece. The platform is 200mm deep and 200mm wide. A motorised lifting devise is concealed within the platform and controlled by two buttons (up and down) fitted to the front panel. The flatland chapter panel is fitted to this lifting device. Pressing the buttons will move each line of text perfectly in line with the top surface of the platform. To inspect the text, the viewer is required to place their eye level with the edge of the platform. They then move their eye along the front edge of the platform, left to right to read each line, before pressing the ‘up’ button to bring the next line of text into view.