36 Apples
36 苹果
36 苹果
2022
artist’s book
limited edition of 36
Ke Xu 许珂
Yue Zhou 周玥
DREAMER FTY 夢廠
242mm*80mm
digital print on paper, hand bound concertina book
artist’s book
limited edition of 36
Ke Xu 许珂
Yue Zhou 周玥
DREAMER FTY 夢廠
242mm*80mm
digital print on paper, hand bound concertina book
In 2021, Ke Xu and Yue Zhou started collaborating on Looking at Things to Know, a long-term art project based on observation. They select an everyday object, and track multiple perceptual transformations through observations of the object. Among two-dimensional images, three-dimensional objects, and multi-dimensional senses, perception is communed with. Using the book as the medium, cognitive biases are presented, while ambiguities of images trigger individual and collective experiences.
The first publication in their series Glass-Looking (2022), focused on looking through drinking glasses. For this project, an apple becomes their second object to observe. This decision was taken as the artists noticed that an apple is often likely to appear next to a water glass. While Glass-Looking featured a study of ready-made images, the observation in this book starts with the real-life purchase of an apple. Ke Xu and Yue Zhou rotated the subject apple at a similar interval 36 times to simulate a 360 degree panorama. This process lead to the creation of the apples 1-36 contained within the inner pages. The top and bottom of the apple correspond to the dust jacket.
The 36 apples presented in 36 Apples are all slightly different. Variation might be caused by viewing angles, timing, and even the state of mind of the viewer, still, they all converge on the same apple. On the other hand, "the apple of my eye" refers to different apples for each viewer.
2021年，许珂和周玥合作展开了基于观察与凝视的长期艺术项目“格物致知”，每一辑将选定一个日常物件，在二维图像、三维物件、及多维感官之间追溯观看的多重转换，并以书为媒介，呈现从“观看”中习得的认知偏差，触发由个体或集体经验所生成的图像“歧义”。
继基于“杯子”的第一次观看后，经常出现于水杯边的苹果成为了第二个“格物致知”的对象。不同于《Glass-Looking》中对现成图像的观察与研究，在本书中，观察的目光始于实际购得的苹果，许珂和周玥以36次匀速转动模拟360度的观看视角，得到内页中编号1-36号苹果，苹果的顶部和底部则对应了本书的封套正反面。《36苹果》所呈现的36个苹果，因观看角度不同而略显差异，却都指向同一个苹果。而根据观看的角度、时机、甚至心境，“the apple of my eye” 又指向了观者眼中的不同苹果。