Introduction

As a Korean student, I spend a lot of time reading English-language books while studying in the Netherlands. Since English is not my native language, understanding the text is not always immediate. I often have to slow down, pause, or reread sentences several times. During this process, I began to notice marks around the printed text, such as underlines, notes, correction lines, and folded corners. These markings were not part of the printed text itself, yet they felt closer to me. They showed what another reader had already selected as important and sometimes even where they had struggled. Instead of presenting the full complexity of the page, they revealed a path through it. Because of this, they were easier to follow, as they reduced the amount of text I had to process at once.

These markings formed an additional layer across the page. Instead of beginning from the sentences alone, I started by following traces left by previous readers before returning to the text itself. These traces showed where attention gathered and how understanding developed across the page. This shift in how I approached reading became the starting point of this project.

In this project, I use the word “trace” to describe marks such as underlines, notes, folds, cuts, pressure marks, and attached fragments produced through actions performed while reading or working with a book. Some traces are intentional, and others are not, but all of them mark moments in which something was selected, changed, or interrupted. Although I use the word “trace” as a shared term for these marks, they do not all function in the same way. Some traces guide reading across the surface of the page, others change the structure of the page itself, and others record the accumulation of actions over time.

Instead of understanding traces as explanations of the text, I approach them as actions that organize reading through marking, transforming, and accumulating. Through these three operations, traces begin to shape how reading happens and allow the movement of thinking to remain visible on the page. This observation led me to ask a central question: if traces in paper books are not secondary marks but primary elements, how can they construct a book in which reading happens through these traces and where the process itself becomes structure and outcome?

To explore this question, I chose a visual essay format. Rather than explaining these operations only through written argument, I tried to let them appear directly through the structure of the pages. Within the book format, these three actions can be followed through physical interaction with the pages themselves. The sentences do not form a continuous paragraph. They are reached by following marks, opening folds, and moving across layered parts of the page. Because of this, the form does not sit outside the project as support. It becomes part of how the project works.

Exploring Traces: Operations Structuring Reading

In approaching this project, I worked through three operations: marking, transforming, and accumulating. These operations did not begin as a fixed plan but appeared gradually through repeated experiments while working on the pages. As I repeated them, they began to organize how movement across the page could occur.

Rather than simply modifying the surface of the page, these operations became design elements that determined how the text could be accessed and reconstructed. Reading was no longer something already prepared for the reader. Instead, it had to be built step by step through the structure of the page.

1. Marking creates readable units that guide how the reader constructs words across the page. Letters are spaced and distributed so they cannot immediately be read as sentences. Instead of highlighting existing text, marks such as underlines and circles indicate where words begin and end and where capitalization occurs. In this way, marking connects scattered letters into readable words and organizes how reading can take place.

2. Transforming changes how the text can be reached by physically altering the structure of the page. Folding, cutting, and layering partially hide and reveal text so that reading cannot occur from a single fixed position. In this section, the sentence cannot be read without unfolding the page. The reader must physically manipulate the structure to continue reading, making reading a physical activity shaped by the page itself.

3. Accumulating makes time visible through repetition. In this section, repetition through typing becomes a way to show how actions build over time. By repeatedly typing the same word in the same position, the thickness of the letters changes depending on how many times the action is repeated. In another example, a sentence gradually appears word by word, allowing the reader to follow the sequence through which it was constructed.

Through these operations, the page no longer presents meaning in advance but requires meaning to be constructed through interaction with its structure.

Position and Analysis

To position this research project, I considered how traces in books have been discussed in marginalia studies and in the field of artists’ books. In marginalia studies, marks such as notes and underlines are understood as records of reading that document how readers interact with a text rather than simply decorate it. This perspective informed my understanding of traces as material evidence of reading in progress. However, while marginalia studies mainly treat traces as records that remain alongside a finished text, this project treats traces as elements that actively construct how reading takes place. In this sense, traces are not only evidence of reading but conditions that organize it.

Artists’ books approach the book as a structured form in which meaning emerges through the organization of pages and materials. Ulises Carrión, an artist and writer associated with conceptual approaches to bookworks, describes the book as a sequence of spaces in which reading unfolds through movement rather than through linear progression, and Johanna Drucker, a scholar and practitioner of artists’ books, similarly describes artists’ books as structures in which meaning develops through material and temporal organization. While these perspectives understand the book as a spatial structure, this project proposes that traces themselves can function as the elements through which this structure is produced.

Some artists also work directly with repetition and accumulation as structural principles. Micah Lexier, a conceptual artist whose work often develops through systems of repetition and serial variation, develops works through those systems, allowing meaning to emerge gradually across sequences. Similarly, Joëlle Tuerlinckx, whose installations often involve the rearrangement of fragments and collected materials over time, explores how meaning emerges through processes of accumulation and reconfiguration. These approaches support my understanding of traces as operations that organize how reading takes place.

Conclusion

At this point, traces are no longer secondary for me. They become part of the work itself. The visual essay does not document the process afterwards. It is built through the process itself.

Because the structure of the visual essay develops through actions such as marking, folding, cutting, and layering, the reader encounters the work through these same operations while reading through it.

Reading is no longer passive: the reader moves, unfolds, and adjusts. Making does not disappear behind the final result but stays visible inside the structure of the work.

Paper plays a key role in this shift. Folding, pressing, cutting, and layering remain visible and continue to affect how the book is read. Through these actions, the process begins to function as a structure.

The project started from noticing small marks that are usually overlooked. By working through marking, transforming, and accumulating, I explored how traces function as structural elements that organize reading. At the same time, this approach raises questions. If traces shape reading, how much control should the reader have? And when does accumulation stop recording actions and begin to define structure? These questions remain open and continue to shape how the work will develop.

Bibliography

Acheson, Katherine O. Early Modern English Marginalia. New York, Ny, Routledge, 2019.

Carrión, Ulises. “The New Art of Making Books.” Artists’ Books: A Critical Anthology and Sourcebook, edited by Joan Lyons, Visual Studies Workshop Press, 1985, pp. 31.

Drucker, Johanna. The Century of Artists’ Books. New York City, Granary Books, 2012.

Jackson, Heather J. Marginalia : Readers Writing in Books. New Haven, Yale Univ. Press, 2010.

Lexier, Micah. Micah Lexier: Book Sculptures. 1993. Oakville Galleries, 1 Jan. 1993.

Joëlle Tuerlinckx. Museé de La Mémoire “Propriété Universelle.” July 2024.