Last year I was a bachelor student in Document Development at The Department of Documentation Science at the University of Tromsø. As an examination project, in spring 2004, I made a small experimental picturebook which I call a multilinear narrative. Earlier in my studies, I had been working with different picturebooks, analysing them through a document approach. I found this approach very useful when trying to describe picturebooks, and so I got the idea of making a picturebook of my own, as an experimental document.
Before I talk about my experimental book, I will say something about why I find picturebooks so fascinating, and also suitable as objects for a document analysis. In picturebooks the consepts of form and content do indeed intervene in each other. Picturebooks uses the physical qualities, such as shape, design, colours, typography and also the materiality to create meaning, as part of the narrative. And this is the reason, I think, why a document approach focusing on the means can be very constructive. Then the question will be: ”What means are used to show what?”.
I woul like to show you an example of a book were the author uses both the pictures, the typography and also the materiality of the pages in a wonderful way to create meaning. The book is made by the Scandinavian author, Tove Jansson in 1952. The English edition of the book is called The book about Moomin, Mymble and Little My, but the original edition is called Hur gick det sen?, which might be translated with What happened next?
This is a good title, I think, because it referes to the special physical qualities of the book. In this book, all the pages has an opening. These openings are elements in the pictures, and parts of the narrative – representing for example a door, a window or a tunnel that the characters in the story enter through as the pages are beeing turned. For the reader the openings function as very effective ”pageturners”. They enable the reader to spot some details on the page behind the opening, before turning the page to find out just ”What happends next?”.
One funny example of how these openings are used as means, to create meaning, is on a page where the text says that one of the characters called Filifjonkan gets frightened, and therefor runs straight through the picture (1). Then the text tells the reader to look at the big hole which has been torn in the page. Here both the text, the picture and also the materiality of the book, the page of paper, are means used to create a narrative, and also to give a metafictional coment about the narrative. The hole, which is mentioned in the text, and symbolized in the picture, is also a real hole in the page, a real hole in the physical world. This gives the reader a great awareness of the medium, a book with pages of paper. It also challenges the reader, playing with the consepts of fiction contra reality.
We find an other great example of how the materiality of the book is used to make a metafictional point on the very last page of the book (2). The hole on this page, which is also the inside of the cover, is just a tiny, small one. One of the characters depicted on this page, little My, says to the others that they all have to stay in the book, because they are too big to get through that tiny hole. A great way of drawing the attention to the book as a physical object.
And no something about my small experimental project. Studying the richness of picturebooks, and the relationship between form and content in them, inspired me. So I made the decision of trying to make a picturebook myself. Experimenting with form was the point of departure for the project. I wanted to find out how form influenced the content, and thereby became part of the narrative.
In Writing Space, Bolter says that: ”A hypertext is like a printed book that the author has attacked with a pair of scissors and cut into convenient verbal sizes” (Bolter 1991:24). So I was thinking; What happends if you attack a picturebook with a pair of scissors, and cut all the pages in two horizontally? Do you get a hypertext? What you do get for sure, is a book with a special structure. I decided that this structure, a book with splitted pages, should be the physical framework for my book. Then the task was to make a narrative that fitted into this structure. I had to find out; what kind of story can I tell within these physical frames? I think it was like having a solution that needed a problem, and I had to make a problem to which the structure of the book would be a good solution.
My experimental document can be seen as a system. In The Sciences of the Artificial, Herbert A. Simon describes what he calls ”[…] nearly decomposable systems, in which the interactions among the subsystems are weak but not negligible” (Simon 1996:197). To a sertain degree, I think my book can be seen as such a nearly decomposable system, because the splitted pages give the book a flexible structure. The parts of the book are connected, but the connections are looser and more flexible than they would have been if the pages were not cut in two.
The book ended up having fourteen pages, and when the pages were cut in two, they could be combined in fortynine different ways. This gave the reader the opportunity to choose different paths through the book, by combining the splitted pages in different ways. This flexible structure needed a flexible narrative. By that I mean that the narrative had to have a nature which made it possible for the reader to perceive a meaningful story, regardless to in what order the pages were arranged. The pictures had to be connected to a certain degree, to form a narrative, but not so strongly connected that they could only function in one particular order or combination.
At the beginning of the process, I tried to make a text to go with the pictures. But I was not able to make a text which both made sence, without beeing banal, and fitted into the structure of the book. Bolter says that: ”By the standards of phonetic writing, picture writing lacks precision. The picture elements extend over a range of verbal meanings; each element means too much rather than too little” (Bolter 1991:47). By making a picture narrative, this lack of precision made it possible for me to make a flexible narrative. A picture narrative opens up for the readers own narration between the pictures, and I found that this was an adventage when the splitted pages were to combined in different ways, and in different orders. After some thinking and some attemts, I found that a simple picture narrative, with more of a cyclic than a linear nature, would be a suitable ”problem” for a book with this particulare solution or structure.
As you see (3) and (4), the result has become a picture narrative, which also can be seen as two separate narratives, depicting two main characters. One of them is placed in a landscape above the ground, in the upper part of the book, and the other one is placed in a cage belove the ground, in the bottom part of the book. There are also some minor characters, the mice, appearing in the pictures. The narratives in both the upper and the bottom part of the book are cyclic narratives, depicting simple activities, and shifts between darknes and light, night and day. All the upper and the bottom pictures can be put together to form a whole, and there is no absolute beginning or ending to the narratives, so basically you can start to read anywhere in the book.
The document approach opens for studying not only the finished result, the document, but also the documentation process. For my project, an analysis of the production process was just as important as an analysis of the document. When you analyse an existing document, you try to find out what parts the document consists of, and what the functions of these parts are. When you make a document, and analyse the production process, you have an other situation. There is no finnished result. You have an idea about the finished document, but you can not predict in every detail how the result will be. You have to make some descisions conserning the means. Then, by using these means, and through some trial and failing you form a document, which might turn out to be quite different from the original idea. Espesially for me, who have never made a book before, the production process became what you might call an experimental fumbling.
When I evaluated the process of making my book, I could easily relate it to what Herbert A. Simon says in the following:
For it is typical of many kinds of design problems that the inner system consists of components whose fundamental laws of behavior – mechanical, electrical, or chemical - are well known. The difficulty of the design problem often resides in predicting how an assemblage of such components will behave (Simon 1996:15).
I found that the production process had been characterized by a constant movement between whole and parts. And these proportions, which were not stabil, but shifting, depended on the point of view, had a mutually influence on eachother. When I made one part or component, this had an impact on, and changed the whole. And this new whole, in turn, had an impact on how the the following parts that were made turned out to be.
I have said that experimenting with form was the point of departure for the book, and during the production process, I wrote a detailed description of this process. When I look at the description, I see that the special structure of the book has been present from the very beginning. Before I started to draw the sketches, I bought a sketchbook and cut all the pages in two. This made it possible to try out different combinations as the drawings were made, and thereby to maintain a survey of all the components of the book.
The way the drawings were made also reflects the special structure of the book. The splitted pages give the book more of a circulare, than a linear structure. And when I made the drawings they were not made one by one in a linear process. Instead different layers in the pictures were made parallel. First I draw the landscape on each page, then the two main characters, and finally the minor characters and other details. This way I could make sure that the layer in one picture would adapt to the corresponding layer in all the other pictures.
As mentioned, one aim for my project was to find out how form influenced on the content, and thereby became part of the narrative. During the production process, I found that in addition to influence on, and to a great extend determine the narrative, form and structure also had a great influence on the production process. The special structure of the book was supposed to give the reader increased freedom, and the opportunity to participate in constructing the narrative, or as the name multilinear narrative indicates, to construct many different narratives. This increased freedom and flexibility in some ways decreased my freedom as producer. I had to try to predict all the possible ways in which a reader could choose to read the book. Both the special structure, and the future readers navigation in this structure, directed both the content of the narrative and the way in which the narrative were made.
So I hope that my small experimental document, and also the analysis of the production process, can contribute to emphasize the importance of the materiality in the picturebook narrative. When studying the great variaty of picturebooks, I think that focusing on text and pictures, and also the materiality like form, structure, typhography and even things I have not mentioned, like sound and smell, and to see how these things are used as means to create meaning, will be fruitful. This kind of document approach, I think, will give an increased insight in the phenomena of picturebooks.
Linn B. Follestad
Bolter, Jay David(1991): Writing Space The Computer, Hypertext, and the History of Writing. Hillsdale, New Jersey Hove and London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers
Jansson, Tove (1984) [1952]: Hur gick det sen? Boken om Mymlan, Mummitrollet och lilla My. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell Förlag AB
Simon, Herbert A. (1996): The Sciences of the Artificial. Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England: The MIT Press