Creativity Defined: Traditional Books With Hyperlinks

When I first came up with a title for this article, I typed, “Old Fashioned Books With Hyperlinks.” I changed “Old Fashioned” to “Traditional;” however, it made me ask myself the question about whether or not I really view regular books as old fashioned. I’m sure I may get some snarky comments from this, but suppose I do think that.

We live in a world where learning how to use the card catalog (remember that?) at the library is, for the most part, obsolete. I even read a post the other day about how in years to come, handwriting probably won’t be taught in school anymore since we hardly ever hand-write anything, and when we do, we write it in printed or block letters. The art of cursive writing may soon be a craft from the past. You can read more about that on this article in USA Today. We’ve featured a lot of articles on Bit Rebels about new creative ways to use traditional books. We may not be reading hard cover books much anymore, but there is no doubt they are still an inspiration to many artists around the world.

Maria Fischer, an artist from Germany, put one of the most creative spins on a traditional book that I’ve seen in a long time. She’s taken the concept of hyperlinks, and what their purpose is on the Internet, and incorporated them into a book she created called Thoughts on Dreams. Since dreams are such a complex and fragile topic, she’s taken certain words and connected them with colored thread to other words in the book that relate to the specific keyword.

In other words, she’s connected sections of words in her book the same way the Internet connects keywords online. Maria explains that the messiness of how all the threads look while they are interconnected represents the confusion of the dreams they describe. This abstract concept connects two worlds, and I absolutely love it. You can learn more about this at Maria Fischer.

Via: [Toxel]