The “Bood From The Ground” is a book that communicates through the use of icons only. Artist, Xu Bing has been researching the communicative elements of various icons for bout ten years, more recently including those incorporated with web and internet use.

The following link is his explaination about why this work is significant, especially with the increasing speed at which we are able to communicate with others on a global scale, noting that this increase in the speed of our daily lives creates a need for communication to happen as quickly as possible. Why take the time to read a sign when a symbol can tell you the same thing? This book (which is still a work in progress) is based on that idea.

Here is an excerpt: “The ubiquity of the Internet and the convenience of ever faster trans-global communication and information sharing have further exposed the limitations of inter-language conversation. As a result, the language of icons, the Internet, and online gaming, consisting primarily of pictographs and images, has already emerged in great volume. This vocabulary is developing at lighting-quick speed, of its own accord, and is not bound by the geographical concepts of the past”