Towards A Rhizomatic Library - Part 1
This is a slightly extended transcript of the talk Carlotta Solari and I gave at the UAL Undergraduate Research Forum at the Chelsea College of Art. As the project develops, we will publish a second / further part/s.
Reapproaching the Library
Together with fellow BA Hons Interaction Design Arts student and friend Carlotta Solari I am currently working on a project exploring the hidden potentials of the library at the London College of Communication. In a playful manner, we are trying to conceptually de- and reconstruct the library through a series of experiments and interventions. The aim of this project is to trigger a wider discussion about the perception and use of libraries, especially art and design libraries. The project was triggered by a collaborative brief with LCC Game Design students which took place in February 2015. We were asked to explore spaces around the college from a different perspective, we decided to go for the calmest and certainly most silent area of the college. For our game players were encouraged to find cards with different words written on them, there were also hidden point cards hidden in the library, the aim was to find as many cards as possible and create sentences. The librarians were very open-minded and so the game marked the start of an on-going conversation with Leila Kassir and Ruth Collingwood from the LCC library.
Early on, we gathered a broad range of questions and ideas to be addressed, such as: what are the preconceptions and the ‘idea’ of the library and how does this relate to the reality? What is the library? What is the arts library? A library is not a neutral space, but a space full of meaning and meaning-making. How do we encourage students to make the links between theory and practice? Between research and creativity? How do we engage them in reading and research? How can we embrace the serendipity and browsing aspect in libraries? Libraries provide access to ‘leftfield’ information and resources (design might be linked to and inspired by literature, sound art, architecture, psycho-geography etc.).
Ways of Mapping
There is an interesting tension between the serendipity aspect and the classification / organisation of libraries. Could the project explore the idea of using the library in a non-library way e.g. moving away from the focussed search? Having heard of the librarians’ plan to design a map of the library we were really interested in the idea of creating a conceptual ma as opposed to a navigational one.
The decimal Dewey system with its hundreds of main categories and subcategories is of particular interest to us as we try to connect different parts and sections of the library. In a way we were interested in challenging that system as it is far from being a perfect one. How does one categorise books, knowledge and thoughts? How can we explore the overlapping spaces of these categories? For us Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the Rhizome, a horizontal and networked image of knowledge production, provided a radically different perspective to the rigid Dewey system. In an attempt to trace and map networks of books (books with similar themes, books that influenced one another, books that provoked a counterpart etc.) we read a lot, researched their historical context and added them as nodes in our network.
While attempting to connect different items, we were very aware of the danger of following an algorithmic-filter-bubble-like concept (think: ‘customers who bough this also bought that’). Creating closed systems of knowledge and not being exposed to contrary opinions is a very worrying development which potentially could be much more harmful to both individuals and societies than we currently imagine. Ideally, a networked library introduces its users and visitors also to information and knowledge contrary to their owns, across societies and specialisms.
Sitterwerk — A Dynamic Library
Our research lead us to discover the Sitterwerk Library, an art and design library near St. Gallen in Switzerland. The reading of the book: The Dynamic Library: Organizing Knowledge at the Sitterwerk- Precedents and Possibilities not only opened our eyes on a number of fascinating aspects of the library but also inspired us to think of new possibilities for our own. The Sitterwerk library is known as a dynamic library- researchers and visitors of the library are invited to truly make the space their own and model it to their needs. The library cleverly uses RFID chips and RFID readers to their full potential. Researchers are encouraged to use the book shelves to their own advantage and place books wherever is more convenient to them, many opt to keep all the books they are using next to each other. An RFID reader scans the shelves continuously and updates the library’s online catalogue to the whereabouts of each book. Another one of their initiatives it the “Bibliozine” project which aims at creating a stronger link between the library’s book collection and Materials Archive. A work table recognises and remembers what is on it and allows users to add notes. Researchers can compare their research with that of others, the research can then be printed and bound in the form of a booklet, RFIDed and added to the library’s collection. Sitterwerk also holds workshops with researchers and visitors on how to improve the library further. One of their workshops focused on finding ways of bringing the books in the library and the materials of the material archive together. One of the groups came up with the idea of using elastic bands to directly tie materials to books that were related in some ways creating thus a haptic experience. This has directly influenced our first experiment in the LCC library.
An Open-ended, Breathing Project
After a conversation with LCC’s Acting Programme Director (CTS) and Contextual & Theoretical Studies Coordinator Mark Ingham it occured to us that we needed to reframe our project. Rather than producing a ‘perfect’ piece of new media work, we felt the urgency to take a more participative approach. As designers we were not only dealing with the objects, service and space of the library, but also with its culture, policies and other forms of contexts. Designer, urbanist and Associate Director at Arup Dan Hill describes these often non-tangible things in his book Dark Matter and Trojan Horses — A Strategic Design Vocabulary, and how Strategic Design can challenge them:
“Strategic design tries to ally pragmatism with imagination, deliver research through prototyping, enable learning from execution, pursue communication through tangible projects, and balance strategic intent […] with iterative action, systems thinking and user-centredness.” — Dan Hill
In a first participative experiment we asked students to leave a little post-it note in the sections of the library where they stopped at. We then went into the silent zone and marked the found post-it notes on a map of the library. As each student got a different staple of post-its, all consecutively numbered, we could then trace their walks through the space. Our aim is to then create a visual network using string to recreate the fleeting act of students’ passages through the library. At the moment it is not clear if certain patterns will emerge from the data.
“One can’t design culture, but it should be possible to shape the conditions in which society and culture unfolds to some extent.” — Dan Hill
Over the next couples of weeks we aim to curate a series of interventions, experiments and workshops, in which we invite both, students and staff, to rethink the library. Our role will not purely be that of the creator anymore, but also that of a facilitator.
