While we were living in London, a huge book called ‘The 48 Laws of Power’ by Robert Greene was given to me by a friend who knew I was interested in ‘that sort of thing’. I knew as soon as I opened it that I’d like to break it up and make a labyrinth piece from it (as you do!) – a triple meander labyrinth to be precise!
Visual Powers
The book has no illustrations, but there’s lots of variety in it on a visual level right through – it is printed stylishly, using red and black type, and is laid out using bold and italic, headlines and body text, plus the paper feels good. And the content sounded really interesting and thought-provoking, so I figured I’d be able to read it too while I was working with it.
Triple Meander Labyrinth
I selected a Roman labyrinth pattern to use as my framework for working with this complex book. It’s a triple meander labyrinth, which means the path loops back on itself 3 times in each of the quadrants. But with this particular book, and its doorstep proportions, I worked out that even 4x a triple meander won’t be enough, so the project has already evolved into creating more than one labyrinth to ‘tell’ the story of this book.
Unfolding
I’m not quite sure yet if there will be two goals or centres or just the one I have at the moment, which is chapter 48 or the end of the book. Once you’ve got to here, of course you’ll have all 48 Laws in your consciousness and be… well powerful, no?! (Maybe there should be a shortcut to exit once you arrive here).
So, we’ll see how this one unfolds on the paper, but in the meantime I’m enjoying absorbing all these power ‘rules’…
Update – see the finished pieces here…
- The 48 Laws of Power: 1-25
- The 48 Laws of Power: 26-48