Moby Dick as Envisioned by Matt Kish
During class today, I saw the following image and was fascinated by it:
I cannot believe that Matt Kish managed to draw a picture for every single page of the novel. Some of his imageswere breathtaking and I loved how he used paper from old, discarded books and gave them a new purpose. One thing that I didn’t understand was the emoji book. I think that reading the emojis is hard enough but the ones in the book didn’t even reflect each line that it “translated”. I really didn’t see much value in that book, but what I did find amazing was the pop-up version of Moby Dick. It seemed like it took a lot of thought, hard work, and effort to produce that book and I appreciated it a lot more than the emoji book.
I think that the emoji book was an interesting concept, and more than an actual translation, I think it function more as a social experiment. They were able to find 800 people willing to help translate this version of Moby Dick. Even if they actual translation was unsuccessful, it is a still an accomplishment that they were able to pull it off. I do agree that the Matt Kish interpretation of Moby Dick was impressive and had a lot more thought put into it.
Seeing that original art piece took me aback in such an inspirational way. The minute my eyes locked on to that picture, I couldn’t stop looking at all the intricacies and details that Matt Kish put in this picture. From the whale carved with dark jagged lines painted behind those blood red letters shock me in the best kind of way. It was definitely in my eyes one of the most influential pictures that I witnessed at the showcase.
I agree that the emoji book was a bit confusing to be in the bunch that was displayed to us. All the other works seemed to be so pristine and meaningful while the emoji book seemed to be so random, making no sense. It is a neat concept for this day and age though to potentially attract the attention of a different audience to Moby Dick. I think that emojis are also used very differently by different groups of people (even though they seem pretty one dimensional) and perhaps that is why this book came out so confusing.