Under Reef is a media and design-oriented work of experimental literature. In this space of signs, a hybrid entity forms, combining the digital and the analog, the visual and the literary. Extracting methods / praxes / tactics from each to use in the other, resulting in a newly-formed graphic entity, conceptually and formally playing as the living dynamic of these media as laid out across each spread.
At the heart of Under Reef lies Mike Corrao’s radical desire to articulate new literary forms. Repurposing and blurring the lines between design, prose, poetry, and theory to assemble a work wholly its own. The project utilises elements of these mediums, as well as collage and 3d modelling, to engage with hybrid spaces, examining where they overlap, and dissecting the unavoidable points of connectivity between them.
Under Reef articulates the book-object as a hybrid entity, as an autonomous body capable of housing its own complex ecologies and budding populations. Through a contemporary framing of the traditional form of the book-spread, the reader encounters the medium’s ever-changing, and often ignored, qualities—through which we are enabled to look at alternative ways we might navigate pages rendered outside of the traditional literary canon.
Throughout the text, Corrao approaches several vital questions. What is the page surface capable of containing? Can a book engender the same kind of interaction as a web browser or video game? What is the role of the reader? What are the obligations of the author? What power do they have over the text after it has left their hands?
140 pages,12.7 x 18.5 cm, softcover, Onomatopee (Eindhoven).
At the heart of Under Reef lies Mike Corrao’s radical desire to articulate new literary forms. Repurposing and blurring the lines between design, prose, poetry, and theory to assemble a work wholly its own. The project utilises elements of these mediums, as well as collage and 3d modelling, to engage with hybrid spaces, examining where they overlap, and dissecting the unavoidable points of connectivity between them.
Under Reef articulates the book-object as a hybrid entity, as an autonomous body capable of housing its own complex ecologies and budding populations. Through a contemporary framing of the traditional form of the book-spread, the reader encounters the medium’s ever-changing, and often ignored, qualities—through which we are enabled to look at alternative ways we might navigate pages rendered outside of the traditional literary canon.
Throughout the text, Corrao approaches several vital questions. What is the page surface capable of containing? Can a book engender the same kind of interaction as a web browser or video game? What is the role of the reader? What are the obligations of the author? What power do they have over the text after it has left their hands?
140 pages,12.7 x 18.5 cm, softcover, Onomatopee (Eindhoven).