Showing posts with label chaos to order. Show all posts
Showing posts with label chaos to order. Show all posts

Thursday, 27 November 2014

Virtual Books and Library Twickets: The Collection


I recently spent a week as writer-in-residence at Manchester Central Library for the Everything Everything Chaos to Order residency.

I took the opportunity to undertake a modest, highly enjoyable digital art project using the simple tools of library books, iPhone and the Manchester Central Library Twitter account.

The concept, to quote myself, was as follows:

‘In a modern library you’re just as likely to leave with a laptop full of information as a rucksack full of books. I wanted to find a way to symbolise the evolution from paper to data that emphasises the importance of both.’

The project turned into a way to showcase printed treasures from around Central Library; exciting, mundane, beautiful, forgotten, well-loved. Each book was reduced to a single image and a piece of quoted text and sent as a Tweet – a digital artefact if you like – to Central Library’s thirteen thousand followers.

Below is the full collection sent over the duration of the residency from start to finish. Armistice Day fell in the same week so I opened the collection with an image from the First World War and finished with an entry from a compendium of Army names from the Second World War, a soldier named G. Thorpe.




  









































































































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Tuesday, 11 November 2014

Virtual Books and Library Twickets


As part of my role as a writer-in-residence for Chaos to Order, I’m executing a small-scale digital art project that utilises library books, photographs and the Manchester Central Library Twitter account.

In a modern library you’re just as likely to leave with a laptop full of information as a rucksack full of books. I wanted to find a way to symbolise the evolution from paper to data that emphasises the importance of both.

To that end I’ll be rummaging around the many shelves of Central Library, unearthing books that appeal to me in some way, and reducing the physical item of a book down to a single photograph and a single Tweet. That’s one digital image and 140 characters to capture the essence of a book.

I will then check the book out of the Library ‘virtually’ via the Central Library Twitter account. The book will be sent out into the world as a small digital artefact that will represent a combination of the contemporary and the traditional library.

You’ll see me check in and out of the Manchester Central Library Twitter account from time to time over the next few days, sending virtual books into the world.


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