A visual interpretation of a section of ‘Poor aunt’ by Haruki Murakami in his book ‘Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman’

A visual representation of a short recording taken from an internet radio channel programme where listeners call in to read the love poetry they have written. This paragraph is a brief warning announced before the start of the programme.
I chose to represent it as a joke, rather than taking it seriously, because obviously a warning serves no purpose in such a context. The final piece is a square banner, referencing Futurist typography and the structure of a radio script.

ration box I

luxuriously packed chocolate bars

each gold wrapper has a quote appropriate to the times of hardship

ration box II

‘War is won by deception’, so says Sun Tze in The Art of War. The tool of deception is employed as a peaceful way to victory without too much bloodshed – the best way to win a war. Deception can thus qualify as an appropriate and well-considered solution in certain situations.

Using the essence of this ancient text, a ration box of ‘chocolate’ bars was created using the only available ingredients during war times – red beans, pearl barley, unrefined sugar, peanuts.

A quote of encouragement is printed on each wrapper (loosely linked to fortune cookie slips).

The message to communicate: Deception as a form of comfort during hardship can act as a human motivating factor. Deception can be positive.

This game is about exploring our daily conversations with one another. Do we carefully select the words we use when talking to someone, or are we straight talkers? Do we use certain words for a motive or to direct a conversation, or is speaking the truth our mantra? This game is all about the players and how they may influence the way the game is played. It may turn out to be a silent (and visual) conversation where each player concentrates on crafting their sentences to accumulate the most points, or it may be a loud and interactive conversation with much banter and laughter.

HOW TO PLAY

1. This multi-player game is a conversation between the players who communicate using the word cards.

2. The player whose first name has the fewest alphabets starts the conversation by forming a sentence using cards from the deck. A maximum of 10 cards can be used any one time.

3. Each player then takes turns to form a sentence to continue the conversation, with the objective of using words with the most number of points (as indicated at the top right of each card) but also relevant to the direction of the conversation.

4.The game ends when no further conversation is possible. The winner is the player with the highest accumulated points.

5. Players can use Help words (5 nouns, 5 verbs & 5 adjectives) in forming a sentence but no points are given for them. Each word card can only be used once. Punctuation cards are reusable.