This project aims to investigate the relationship between media, gesture, and the body through isolating the swipe, one of the most repeated actions in contemporary media use. Tools act as an extension into space, and through repeated use, the gesture becomes no longer fully conscious but a learned reflex.

Drawing on Are We Human, Guattari’s Machinic Unconscious, and Stiegler’s concept of tertiary retention, I am exploring the medium of books as both a machine and an archive. A medium that can record, isolate, archive, and distort gestures. The book aims to transform this unconscious act of swiping into physical form, using a shifting void within its pages to reveal the scale, repetition, and accumulation of our digital habit. By excavating the gesture, the book externalises a collective habit. The shifting voids and misaligned pages highlight how repetitive interaction transforms both the user and the medium.