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      • Vox Populi, London
      • Cover Version
      • We are behind
      • Faker Drinker Soldier Heiress
      • Vox Populi, Switzerland
      • Auras and Levitations (Second Edition)
      • The Happy Hypocrite – A Rather Large Weapon, issue 4
      • Kidnapping Mountains
      • Teignmouth Electron
      • Strategic Questions #2: Has Man a Function in Universe?
      • ERR (Eighth Edition, 2008)
      • Feature: Reconstruction
      • Proximity Machine
    • 2
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      • Vox Populi, Tokyo
      • Letters 2004–2006: Confirmation That You still Exist; I Respect Your Authority; When Will It End; One London
      • Alien Invaders: A Guide to Non-Native Species of the Britisher Isles (Volume 1)
      • Ice Blink: An Antartic Essay
      • Vox Populi, Norway
      • Vox Populi, Sydney
      • Folk Archive: Contemporary Popular Art from the UK
      • Lost in Space
      • Head in the Railings
      • Remixed Water
      • Urban / Wild
    • 3
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      • Why and Why Not
      • I Know Where I'm Going: A Guide to Morecambe & Heysham
      • Magazine
      • Frances Stark: Collected Writing 1993−2003
      • Auto Roto Font
      • Trying to get in between
      • Active Genital
      • Ott's Sneeze
      • Spring Snow − A Translation
      • Progressive Disorder
      • Of Lives Between Lines
      • Mobile Vulgus
      • Material: Public Works − The Bridge 2000
      • Meeting #13
    • 4
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      • After the Freud Museum (Paperback Edition)
      • First I was afraid, I was petrified
      • The Contemporary Picturesque
      • The Uses of Literacy
      • A Case of Hysteria
      • Seven Wonders of the World
      • Smash This Puny Existence
      • The Palaver
      • Marx Angels
      • Library Relocations
      • Diary of a Steak
      • small Gold Medal
      • Book Works: A Partial History and Sourcebook
    • 5
      • Book Works

      • The Blindings
      • Rex Reason
      • Two Oxford Reading Rooms (Special Edition)
      • The Price of Words, Places to Remember 1−26
      • Notable Days
      • A Public Intimacy (A Life Through Scrapbooks)
      • What's My Name?
      • A Stellar Key to The Summerland

      Simon Patterson

      Rex Reason

      Full colour | 105 x 130 mm, Soft cover | 1994 | Edition of 2,000 copies
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Rex Reason presents the Periodic Table of the Elements in book form. A colour-coding system is set up (black for solids, blue for liquids and yellow synthetics) but where we might expect to find hydrogen, helium or lithium we find Yul Brynner, William Hogarth and Maria Callas. The selected names relate to the chemical symbol for each element: both letters must appear in the chosen name for example, Bertolt Brecht (Br, Bromine).

A loose logic prevails in the choice of names, for example names in red, gases, are from Greek myth or history and the yellow synthetic elements are given their proper names. However, Patterson disrupts this system with red herrings, mysteries and riddles that test the reader’s knowledge and that expose the inherent human desire to establish order and meaning.


アーティスト・Rex Reasonによる、本の形をした元素周期表。黒が固体、青が液体、黄色が合成物と色分けによる周期表の体裁を取りながらも、それぞれの元素記号のページに人物の名前が入っているところが特徴。これらの名前は、元素記号に使われているアルファベットが使われている人物名になっている。

この記号の色と人物名の関連性が適切なものもあれば、適していないものもある。そこに、Pattersonが読者の知識を試すようなナゾナゾなど、信憑性の怪しい情報によりさらなる混乱をもたらす。本書はその混乱を通じて、人間の生来持っている意味や順番を秩序付ける欲望をさらけだしてしまう。
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