Close Up

Summer 2020

Whenever I’m feeling uneasy or like something is wrong but I can’t place my finger on what, I often can only move forward by sifting through literally everything I remember from the past couple days to create a causality to explain what exactly I’m feeling. “Close Up” is an inconveniently large book that locks open until you flip sequentially through every page. The comic itself is non sequential and overwhelmingly dense, following several characters through periods of indistinct unease in their lives. As such, you as the reader must string together a narrative from the pieces given, actively participating in the characters’ healing process.

At the moment, I don’t really have a good way to share this project understandably, but pending a few variables, I’m hoping to produce a few more copies once I have access to a laser cutter!

Technical Design

The book locks open when two tabs attached to clothespins close, keeping the leafs of the book spine from closing
The book is powered by a 9V battery fed through a 5V DC Regulator
An ATTiny85 with a 16kHz external clock reads values from 5 photodiodes which detect whether or not a page has been read based on whether or not the photodiode is covered
Photodiode threshold values are constantly being reevaluated based on the room's ambient light
If a page has been read without the reader skipping ahead or flipping several pages at once, the LED corresponding to the flipped page turns green
Once all of the pages have been read and all the LEDs are green, the reader can push the labelled button and two servos will pull the clothespins open, allowing the book to close
The book was built with MDF and plywood and measures 48" x 17" x 3.5"

Close Up

Excerpts

Technical Design

Github