Three layers of handmade pulp paper. The paper appears to be blanc. Sandwiched between the layers, like watermarks, are 36 NFC-tags. When a NFC enabled smartphone is held to a spot on the paper a corresponding webpage pops up. It shows one off the 36 dramatic situations supposedly describing all human interaction from ancient days till the present.
§1
The pulp papermaking process is said to have been developed in China during the early 2nd century AD, possibly as early as the year 105 A.D., by the Han court eunuch Cai Lun, although the earliest archaeological fragments of paper derive from the 2nd century BC in China. A watermark is an identifying image or pattern in paper that appears as various shades of lightness/darkness caused by thickness or density variations in the paper.
§2
Carlo, Count Gozzi (1720 – 1806) was an Italian playwright who lived in 18th century Venice when he constructed a list of 36 dramatically and tragically situations. According to Gozzi all human interaction could be classified within these 36 situations. Both Schiller and Goethe tried to criticize or add to the list but they finally agreed: there are no more than 36 dramatically situations.
§3
Georges Polti (1867 – 1946) categorized every dramatic situation that might occur in a story or performance. To do this Polti analysed classical Greek texts, plus classical and contemporaneous works. In his introduction, Polti claims to be continuing the work of Carlo Gozzi, who also identified 36 situations.
§4
Near field communication (NFC) is the set of protocols that enable electronic devices to establish radio communication with each other by bringing them into proximity to a distance of typically 10 cm or less. A NFC-enabled smartphone is the reader of the paper.
§5
Georges Polti (1867 – 1946):
"Now, to this declared fact that there are no more than thirty-six dramatic situations, is attached a singular corollary, the discovery that there are in life but thirty-six emotions. A maximum of thirty-six emotions, —and therein we have all the savor of existence; there we have the unceasing ebb and flow which fills human history like tides of the sea; which is, indeed, the very substance of history, since it is the substance of humanity itself, in the shades of African forests as Unter den Linden or beneath the electric lights of the Boulevards; as it was in the ages of man's hand-to-hand struggle with the wild beasts of wood and mountain, and as it will be, indubitably, in the most infinitely distant future, since it is with these thirty-six emotions—no more— that we color, nay, we comprehend, cosmic mechanism, and since it is from them that our theogonies and our metaphysics are, and ever will be, constructed; all our dear and fanciful "beyonds;"—thirty-six situations, thirty-six emotions, and no more."