Title: L’Aquila e La Rana (The Eagle & The Toad)
Artist: Luca Massaro
Additional contributor: Sabrina Ragucci (afterword)
Designer: Luca Massaro, Samuele Ranocchia
Editor: Luca Massaro
Imprint: LDS Editions
Printer: Newspaper Club / Glasgow UK
Publication date and place: November 2014 / Milan, Italy
Edition: 300 numbered copies
Format, binding: Softcover / unbound newspaper
Size: 28,9 x 38 cm
Number of pages and images: 36 pages / 23 images
Type of printing and paper: Offset newsprint / 52 gsm recycled newsprint
Retail price: 10 €
Book Description: According to several scientific studies, hundreds of frogs deserted their mating place in the days before the 2009 earthquake in L’Aquila, Italy. An ancient legend attributed the occurrence of an earthquake to the jumps of a giant frog, carrying the Earth on its back. Zheng Heng, Chinese scientist, invented in 132 a seismograph called Didong Yi, at the base of which eight frogs were represented. L’Aquila e La Rana was produced during an artist residency in L’Aquila, Italy, and was recently developed with an interactive digital corollary (The Eagle and The Toad). As an experiment of bestiary in the book-format of a newspaper, the artist book investigates in what terms the prevision of natural phenomena, synchronicity and the imaginary (the frog) is related to the vision of the natural world, the real time and the documentary (the eagle).
Book Soundtrack:
- Title: L'Aquila e La Rana