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#2507W

I’m not motivated to make things because i don’t think anybody would care, and what’s the point of making stuff for the drawer. Art is meant to be seen.

The Library of Babel has procedurally generated 410 page books in shelves of 32 volumes, walls of 5 shelves in hexagons (blocks/rooms) of 4 walls. So 640 books/hexagon, 262 400 pages/hexagon.
It’s all possible 410 page books.

What project could i make with this? Print out a book with a specific reference? Print out some pages and do something with them? Use the text as a basis for something? Find english words (library has a tool built in), then use that pattern as a basis for photo composition? The possibilities are endless and I’m not sure I like any of them.

I’m going through sorting/archiving my notes app once again. But I keep coming back to the thought that instead of notes searchable, tagged, categorized by topic, it feels better to use this place as a sort of notes/journal spot. It’s more sequential, not structured at all, but works like my brain works: it is organized by which day I was thinking about a certain thing.

The Library of Babel is about meaninglessness and the human search for meaning in spite of it. It si also about futility: searching for meaningful text in randomness is both useless, meaningless and unlikely to succeed.

So I’m thinking about picking one hexagon, and printing all the books in it, one by one. Binding them, making basically small artifacts of meaninglessness.

One book is 410 pages.

Printing in a self service print shop on A4 paper, 4-up (so I end up with an A6 sized book) is about €13. This doesn’t include binding, I’m not even sure what binding technique would work.
Printing from a print-on-demand service would be around €20 plus shipping.

With 640 books in a hexagon, printing out an entire hexagon would come out to about €8 320 plus binding.

Other uses for the Library: