This project is to identify, analyse, and manipulate the relationships between parts within a given set through different methods. The focus of this project is to consider how these methods allow me to create new patterns and change the relationships between the items in the set, and to experiment with a range of formal approaches to change the way the set is presented, circulated or accessed.
For this brief, I chose to work with the English Crime and Execution Broadsides set from Harvard Curiosity Digital Collections. This catalogue is a collection of nearly 600 broadsides highlights crime and capital punishment, primarily in England, as seen through the popular press in the 18th and 19th century.
My first experiment was to categorise these items in the set according to the content / object of the crime, which helped me sort out the information and facilitated my sorting.
My second experiment was to do subtraction, extracting the most important headings, sorting and ordering them according to the focus of the text. I think this method is interesting and oriented.
My third experiment was to extract wood engraving about criminals and reconstruct them according to the content in the images. These images contain a great deal of information, some very visual and some requiring additional explanation. Meanwhile, I sorted each image according to the date of the public execution.
My fourth experiment was to extract verses and combine them with corresponding wood engraving. This was like adding a caption to a picture, like a clip from a film.