Thoughts On: Alex Pritchard
The Fruitmarket Gallery host an Artists' Books weekend every February which I highly recommend you to check out when it next rolls around.
For now I am going to spill out some thoughts on an Book Binder & Illustrator that I found at the fair back in February 2014.
This artist's name is Alex Pritchard. You can read about him in his own words here: http://www.artsthread.com/profile/alexpritchard/
Alex uses his work to describe scientific theory and help people visualise data, ideas and big numbers. I am particularly attracted to his work as I love science (mainly physics and astronomy) but I do feel that my dyslexia holds me back from fully conceiving ideas when they are presented purely in mathematical or word-based forms.
Coming across Alex's work at the Book Fair was very exciting for me. He had a book at the time for sale (I wish I had bought it now!) which consisted of a concertina of cards, each card representing a planet, with a visual depiction of the planet (to scale) and a measurement worked out (to scale) using the viewer as "the sun". I got very worked up at the idea that you could then take this book, stand in a field and place the cards at the stated distance away from you and literally have created an ad-hoc (non-operational) Orrery.
Having no money to purchase the book my heart craved I picked up one of his business cards (almost equally as exciting) and had the most incredible fun for a couple of months using it to foist scientific facts about the universe on people.
See his business card an infographic here (the image that follows is not my work and copyright belongs to Alex Pritchard *alex-pritchard@hotmail.co.uk*):
This is an infographic depicting the make-up of the universe and (to the best of my memory) is...
Large Grey: Dark Energy
Smaller Grey: Dark Matter
Red: Hydrogen
Orange: Helium
Yellow: Stars (Photons, Light)
Green: Physical/Solid Matter (Planets, Asteroids)
If you like this... Upon producing Pritchard's card to a good friend yesterday she squealed with delight and told me about David McCandless' Book "Information is Beautiful" which she is reading currently. Ever a fan of collecting pretty books and facts to put everything in perspective I have been on line to his website today to have a bit of a dig around, and suggest you check it out too: http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/
For now I am going to spill out some thoughts on an Book Binder & Illustrator that I found at the fair back in February 2014.
This artist's name is Alex Pritchard. You can read about him in his own words here: http://www.artsthread.com/profile/alexpritchard/
Alex uses his work to describe scientific theory and help people visualise data, ideas and big numbers. I am particularly attracted to his work as I love science (mainly physics and astronomy) but I do feel that my dyslexia holds me back from fully conceiving ideas when they are presented purely in mathematical or word-based forms.
Coming across Alex's work at the Book Fair was very exciting for me. He had a book at the time for sale (I wish I had bought it now!) which consisted of a concertina of cards, each card representing a planet, with a visual depiction of the planet (to scale) and a measurement worked out (to scale) using the viewer as "the sun". I got very worked up at the idea that you could then take this book, stand in a field and place the cards at the stated distance away from you and literally have created an ad-hoc (non-operational) Orrery.
Having no money to purchase the book my heart craved I picked up one of his business cards (almost equally as exciting) and had the most incredible fun for a couple of months using it to foist scientific facts about the universe on people.
See his business card an infographic here (the image that follows is not my work and copyright belongs to Alex Pritchard *alex-pritchard@hotmail.co.uk*):
This is an infographic depicting the make-up of the universe and (to the best of my memory) is...
Large Grey: Dark Energy
Smaller Grey: Dark Matter
Red: Hydrogen
Orange: Helium
Yellow: Stars (Photons, Light)
Green: Physical/Solid Matter (Planets, Asteroids)
If you like this... Upon producing Pritchard's card to a good friend yesterday she squealed with delight and told me about David McCandless' Book "Information is Beautiful" which she is reading currently. Ever a fan of collecting pretty books and facts to put everything in perspective I have been on line to his website today to have a bit of a dig around, and suggest you check it out too: http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/
