Body Modification / Binding Experiment

To keep it conceptual, I wanted to try binding the publication with barbells which are commonly used in piercings such as the lips, ears, nose etc. The reason I chose to use these was that they are fairly simple shaped, and I felt they could act as 'staples' and hold the pages together.



The back of the barbell is flat, but when I put the book open and straight, it stuck out. Barbells come in different sizes, but this was a small one. If it stuck out this would affect how appropriate it would be as a binding method and would get in the way.



Because of the looseness, the pages did move around too much.





The barbell did look quite nice externally, but overall this binding method would not be secure enough. To keep it conceptual still, stapling could be a simple method as they still have a metal appearance, keeping to the theme of the publication, but also not being too novelty looking and distracting from the content.