Database is definitely different from the archive or library. One obvious distinction is that database is comparatively more active. Unlike art works or books, data rarely have the value of collection and storage. The best treatment to data and information is active usage. Alexander Library had the ambition to collect all book around the world… Read More »
Bear71 – Databases How do we collect data or use data? How can the collection of data be represented? When we think of data representation our minds imagine graphs and charts, or other methods of statistical analysis. But can data be expressed emotively? We regard data as factual, objective emotionless – yet data are the products… Read More »
Luis Soriano, a teacher in the small town of La Gloria, Colombia, has spent the past 15 years bringing books to children of the rural communities on the back of his donkeys. He stores the ~5000 books at his home and also stores some at friends houses, because he is out of room. He is currently in… Read More »
The Warburg Library was founded by Aby Warburg and is known for its unique classification and the collection which reflects who Aby Warburg had been. Most libraries have a systematic order – they’re organized thematically or alphabetically — but the Warburg Library is different. “Warburg’s system was closer to that of poetic composition,” remarks Alberti Manguel… Read More »
http://prezi.com/n5jesgnyo0mi/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share AnneSullivan_JohnSoaneMuseum Sir John Soane’s Museum: The House Museum as Library This past week, we were assigned an essay on the future of the Warburg Library, a public institution which started off as the personal collection of Aby Warburg. In her essay Reconceiving the Warburg Library as a Working Museum of the Mind, Barbara M.… Read More »
All utopias are depressing because they leave no room for chance, for difference, for the ‘miscellaneous.Everything has been set inorder and order reigns. Behind every utopia there is always some great taxonomic design: a place for each thing and each thing in its place. – Picard, Species of Spaces and Other Pieces “Everything has been… Read More »
“Cats and Watermelons,” by Gabriel Orozco. Photo from PBS “First thoughts about classification inevitably turn to the simultaneously mundane and extraordinary ambition to capture the universe of all that there is and has been” – Roy Boyne Walking around a new grocery store is always a small adventure for me. Each experience provides an… Read More »
I’m going to talk about three different examples of useless classification today, but I guess in order to do that, I need to say what would constitute useful classification, so I can show how these examples don’t fit that mold. That, of course, is the main question of today’s readings. For my purposes, I’ve been using… Read More »
As our society generates more and more data, with each new data set replacing the old, the information of the past can be easily devalued (I’m not sure if the information is devalued) and forgotten.The forgotten information can be resurfaced by artists who find or remember its value to our society. There are artists who… Read More »
This week I will be discussing Agnès Varda’s The Gleaners and I (2000), in light of this week’s theme: Archival Aesthetics. The film explores the concept of “gleaning” and “gleaners.” The film focuses on people who glean for food in the traditional sense after a harvest; or in a more contemporary sense, gleaners who glean… Read More »