My Conclusion:
After some troubles in the beginning, Jean François Niceron and his book, La perspective curieuse, became more and more a good friend of mine and introduced me to the exciting world of old books.
What problems did I encounter in making friends with my book?
The really big problem did not seem to be a big problem for a long time. Furthermore I found out that I made a huge mistake in Task number 2.
Student will ‘make contact’ with their book by visiting one of the libraries in Zurich where the book is held.
As I published in Task 1, I correctly found wich library has a physical copy of my book. Since Task 1 was just about giving a link to a digital version of the book, I had a quick look at it. However I did not know every page and how it looked. So after ordering a visit to the library, to make contact to “la perspective curieuse”, I did not realize they did give me a wrong book. Both are french, and both have something with “perspective” in its title. Also the librarian told me to be quick, many other students are waiting. I became friend with the wrong book and didn’t notice. So comes I also misunderstood the content and overall structure of the book.
So I became really confused when working on Task number 4. After I had to take a closer look at the digital version of the book, I felt like it is complete new to me. So I checked the Video (Task 2) and realized what has happened. However it took me a while to find out whether I had the wrong book in the library or a wrong digital version.
Another issue that bothers me, I can’t speak french (not fluently), so I were only able to find out about the content in further analysis by others. Since its mathematical drawings on perspective were really interesting and inspiring to me, I would have loved to be able to read some pages. So I became a better friend with the english version of the book I guess.
As I was not able to really make contact with the correct book, I will revisit the library to give my friend a visit.
What have I learned from my book?
As already mentioned before I could not get too much into the content of the book itself. However even more important, my new friend introduced me to a complete new world. Not only that it is years of research put into one book, also the story of the author and the story behind the book itself was really interesting to me. The thing I liked the most, you always know were things come from. You read a book that is over 300years old and can find about everything you want. Who wrote it? Why? When? Who made the first copy? You can find all of that information. In todays world everyone can post everything.
“La perspective curieuse” gave me a better understanding for books and to see their value as important resource beside the internet.
Had I problems with the tasks?
Besides the problem in Task number 2, all the tasks went very easy. Even if I have never heard of the adobe software before, with your help I figured out how to use it and how to apply it on my text.
To me the most exciting task was Task 5 in groups. Until this task you had the feeling to only do the exercises and not to learn something for yourself.
However when being required to tell others about my friends content, I was excited how much I actually knew about him. It was interesting to hear others stories and comparing it to mine.
It made me realize what I have actually learned.