+/- One Percent

±OnePercent is a collaborative artists’ book exploration of the duplicative, and yet wildly variant, nature of heredity and the human genetic code. The book, created by 8 graduate students under Marginalia Press, the press of the MA Art and the Book program at the Corcoran College of Art + Design, is a work  composed of three innovative books in a multi-layered, nested structure with traditional letterpress, as well as contemporary digital and collagraph printed imagery and text. The book is comprised of structures which follow an arc from traditional to modern to experimental: ancient Coptic, multi-faceted accordion/flag, and sculptural spiral, using mill-made and handmade papers, and cloth. Each structure in its own distinctive way works together with the others to explore the complex ties between human DNA, family relationships, individualism and identity.