I became interested in the I Ching after reading biography of Philip K Dick, who used the I Ching to establish a lot of the content for his novel ‘The Man in the High Castle’.
There are several interesting visual adaptations of the I Ching, such as the Photographic I Ching and AG Muller’s I Ching Holitzka, however these seemed to either appear dated or at least not represent a more western interpretation of the hexagrams.
I decided to begin a project based on the narrative of the I Ching, and produce appropriate but also contemporary illustrations for the I Ching hexagrams. The idea was that not only could the Illustrated hexagrams be read in the traditional manner (as a result of coin or yarrow stalk divination) but also could be arranged into arbitrary sequences and actually create new stories and narrative ideas (As Philip K Dick had done)
I intend to use some of the initial ideas from my current illustrations to produce a full set of 64 hexagrams in the future, for now though you can see the current set of illustrated I Ching hexagrams here.
If anyone is interested in prints, please contact me. Also, I would be keen to hear ideas about how these could be adapted, for example I was considering building a Flash application for performing readings, decorated by animations based on the Illustrations.
One Response to Illustrated IChing
parDegree
Dec 7th 2007
10:15 am
I’d prefer reading your findings and comments in french, but my knowledge of your languange is far too week. I’ll certainly try to better that fact some day. As I don’t know anyting about the story from other sources, I cannot judge as to the correctness of your summary. From the pure tune of your post, I’ll conclude that it is as factual as is possible.
I’m sure happy to see someone tackle the language barrier to inform about things going on in the french speaking sphere.
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