Author Description

When Mike Mandel took a teaching job in Pullman, WA he left Chicago and he left his girlfriend, Chantal Zakari. The book is based on their three-year long distance relationship between Pullman and Chicago, and later Boston. It is also based on their website which became a virtual space to continue their relationship. In this "place" they carried on dialogues about daily life, about cultural difference, and statements of identity, using the visual strategies of the web to communicate. Using hypertext and multimedia they respond to each other's stories. The design of the book invokes the visual language of the internet in order to describe the nature of their virtual relationship. Translucent pages enable subtle intersections so what's underneath bleeds through the top page. The book turns out to be a hybrid book/web design piece that points to electronic media as the site where much of our lives are increasingly being played out.