Wandering Albatross
Date
2023/2 - 2023/3
Media
inner page: printing paper 20lb ivory, cover: CCSW 80lb, tape binding
Dimension
6’’ x 3’’ x 1’’
Category
Class project (VIS110H: Text and Art), Flipping Book, Typography, Creative Writing, Installation
Wandering Albatross is an art book project consisting of a 139-page flip book (available in multiple copies), a stop-motion documentation video, and poems translated into different languages.
The book portrays a series of abstract serene scenes: the rise and fall of foamy waves, the gradual exposure of shells from the sand, the sunset, the starry sky, the meteor shower, and the gliding wandering albatross.
With no clear start or end point, this flip book deviates from the traditional. Carefully arranged and paced to be double-sided, Wandering Albatross allows freedom for different interpretations:
Some discover the bittersweet story of how two individuals cross paths for a short moment in their lifelong journeys, heading in different directions.
Some read a meditative conversation between two people observing nature.
Some glimpse into the headspace of one who relives past memories in cycles, getting lost and seeking peace to move forward.
Wandering Albatross is a book about love—an elusive emotion that connects people to each other, to themselves, and to nature. Love is ephemeral and fragile, yet profound and strong. Like a language, it is learned through lived experience.
Wandering albatross is the largest albatross —
it flies and glides
70,000 kilometers each year across lands and oceans, searching for food
and reuniting with its lifelong mate during the breeding season.
Wandering albatross is the promise of separation, reunion, and separation
again. A cycle: wax and wane, day and night, life and death, prologue and
afterword.
An adventure story. Wandering albatross does not fly backward or in cycles —
it wanders along the direction of time.
A cumbersome giant, a sorrowful burden,
a heartbroken poet, a gloomy omen.
The tales of wandering albatross keep passing down as the bird
travels on.
Wandering albatross is the ocean foam, the starlight. The ephemeral connection
between sea and sky —
this surely happens, because wandering albatross
remembers everything.