Concept statement

I learned about the creature, krill, from The Silent Spring. A krill is translucent, it lives in massive population in the ocean around the globe. I saw the way the krill kicked its legs in the water, that it seemed to be uncertain about where to go, while its kicking was so hard and determined. It’s movement and its transparency indicate a little sadness. Because a krill is transparent, so it has no choice whether to be exposed to the surrounding. I could observe its entrails with interest, and I could see through its feeling if it has them. That’s how a mini creature living in a completely different scale comes into comparison with me. I am not good at burying my feelings. I reveal whatever I feel on my face without consciousness, and if I try to digest them, they don’t seem to really go away. If I hide them, my feelings erupt at some point.

 

Reflection

I didn’t really spend too much time struggling what to present in the zine, but I spent a lot of time asking myself why I chose krill and how am I going to explain it to my audience. I experimented and revised a lot to put my fragmented thoughts in sequence so the readers are not confused.

 

The idea of krill jumped out when I walked across the street, so I assume that it has been in my unconsciousness for a while. But about how it started, I believe it is from a memory:

I got a bag of shrimp eggs along while at primary school. I scattered the flesh-color powder-like eggs into clear water and on the third day I witnessed the tiny creatures that live in a completely different scale from I. I had to use a magnifying glass to see their legs. I saw every baby shrimp kicking in the water flow in a random direction. A million question marks lay in my head at that moment.

Unfortunately, the baby shrimps gradually stopped kicking after a few days, which makes the memory more unforgettable……I could do nothing!

 

About the material, tracing paper is a perfect demonstration for the idea. But it was so soft and fragile that I tried hard not to create wrinkles on it. The bookbinding was a challenge. I didn’t want staples to be present with the zine cover, so I fastened every page with double-faced adhesive tape to keep the simplicity on my zine cover, which definitely added inconvenience and difficulty to the bookbinding.

 

The dummy and the final work were different in content. From the feedback, I realized that the anecdote that I included in the dummy didn’t really work well in explaining the idea of lucency and minification to the audience, so I deleted it and emphasized the ideas directly through images and textures.