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Being There: Chicago’s Open Door

Jan 7, ’12 4:49 AM

We just returned from a week in Chicago. Most of our time was dedicated to family (my husband’s family lives there), but we managed to spend a few afternoons downtown. I had never visited the Robie House, so we did that. And I finally found a Chicago pizza I like, although it’s more New Haven than Chicago style (I’m in Wicker Park so often — how come I’d never been to Piece before?!). I also tried to visit the Read/Write Library, the former Underground Library, in their new home in Humboldt Park — but unless I was confused, they seem to have gone back underground; the place looked vacant.

From the top o' the Hancock Tower -- Isn't she a beautiful city?

I did manage to visit one of the other libraries on my list: the library at the Poetry Foundation’s new home. I’ve studied a few other poetry places — the Alvar Aalto-designed Woodberry Poetry Room among them — and I was eager to see how the Foundation would translate Harriet Moore’s mission “to give to poetry her own place,” into architectural form.

The building, designed by local architect John Ronan, sits on the corner of West Superior and Dearborn. It’s a glass box within a box — a little Beinecke-esque, I suppose, in that the inner box displays the books — but here the interstitial space, in-between the outside and inside boxes, is still exterior. The outer black zinc screen wall surrounds a garden (which looks a little barren in these winter months, and whose pavers can get mighty icy), with a cut out on the corner to invite passage through to the building’s entrance.

In all the press coverage I’ve read of the new building (there doesn’t seem to be much), and in the Foundation’s own promotional material, Ronan is quoted as describing the garden as an “urban sanctuary, a space that could mediate between the street and the building, blurring the distinction between public and private.” Ah, the old “blurring the boundaries” schtick! I’ve heard that one before! I was hoping for a slightly more poetic, and original, articulation of the design concept. Nevertheless, the “sanctuary” description does seem apt; it is remarkably peaceful inside the garden — thanks, no doubt, to the fact that this stretch of Superior seems relatively calm.

In the lobby is a reception desk and an exhibition space, where the work of Black Sparrow, Burning Deck, and Fulcrum presses, each noted for its identifiable visual aesthetic, was on display. I admired not only the striking cover designs, but also the clever clips used to mount the books on the wall.

All the building’s public functions — in addition to the exhibition space, a performance hall and the library — are on the ground floor, off the lobby. But leading up the stairs, toward the private spaces where the Poetry magazine and foundation staff work, we see Harriet Moore’s declaration that Poetry should be an “open door” — a convenient metaphor for this new glass building that puts the poetic object on display.

The Open Door will be the policy of this magazine — may the great poet we are looking for never find it shut, or half-shut, against his ample genius! To this end the editors hope to keep free from entangling alliances with any single class or school. They desire to print the best English verse which is being written today, regardless of where, by whom, or under what theory of art it is written. (Moore, 1912)

The library itself, with its 30,000 non-circulating volumes, is clean and bright, but a bit sterile (to be expected of a building funded by pharmaceutical money?; those critical of the gift might say so). There’s a palpable tension between rarefaction and accessibility, which perhaps echoes early Poetry‘s negotiation of the values of high modernism with Moore’s “open door.”

From the mezzanine, looking north (I think!)

In my quick visit I did discover a few fantastic books I’ll look for back in New York — but aside from the books themselves, the warmest, most charming things in the room were these lovely reminders that poetry — both in an abstract sense, and concretely, as it takes form in Poetry magazine — is a sensory, dimensional thing:

We ended the day with a trip to the Museum of Contemporary Art, where I was happy to revisit the book art of Dieter Roth and learn more about Gordon Matta-Clark’s history of site-specific work at the MCA (Lawrence Weiner fell into one of M-C’s cut-outs on an upper floor and landed down on Floor 2!). I was also grateful to have discovered the work of Ron Terada (creator of the “Being there” sign at the top of this post), David Hartt, and, especially, Iain Baxter&. Baxter’s reinvention as N.E. Thing Company, which doled out aesthetic judgments, and his detourned landscape art — particularly the impressionist landscapes on TV screens — were totally brilliant.

IAIN BAXTER&: Works 1958-2011 from MCA Chicago on Vimeo.

The Ian Baxter& Show, The City at Dusk & Me

To close on a completely random note: my dogs, with whom I was able to spend some time over the holidays, and whom I now miss terribly:

Dugan

Roxy & Rudy

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Library Jam

Dec 2, ’11 12:13 AM

via 3liz4 on Flickr: http://bit.ly/rASj3P

Trebor Scholz has posted the audio recording of the libraries panel (what one might call, figuratively speaking, a “jam”) I organized and moderated at the Mobility Shifts conference in October. You’ll hear me being all inarticulate at the beginning, then I make way for the brilliance of Kim Dulin from the Harvard Library Innovation Lab, then Linda Johnson from the Brooklyn Public Library, and finally, Deanna Lee from the NYPL.

The Library in Your Pocket: Library Tech Development and DIY Learning by THE NEW SCHOOL NYC

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Talking Archives, Infrastructures, and Interfaces Today @ 4pm

Oct 14, ’11 2:43 AM

Please come! Friday, October 14, 4-6pm
Theresa Lang Student Center, 55 W 13th St., 2nd Floor
You’ll need to register for the Mobility Shifts conference!

America’s public libraries, as the dominant narrative goes, afforded all people “the means of acquiring knowledge, self-education, [and] culture” (Oscar Bluemner, 1898). Libraries, in their dual – and often precariously balanced – commitments to cultural uplift and cultural outreach, have long been, at least in theory, places of self-directed, DIY learning. As materials once available only in the stacks have become ever more accessible in people’s homes and in their pockets, libraries’ strategies for cultural outreach, and for supporting patrons’ self-education, have evolved. Libraries are developing new ways for patrons to access their collections; drawing attention to underutilized collections; and helping users filter and contextualize material. Meanwhile, international organizations are using technology to bring libraries to regions of the world where they’d been scarce. And many of these initiatives are creating new opportunities for patrons to do things with or contribute to material in libraries’ collections.

Recent library-led technology development projects have attracted attention. As Alexis Madrigal wrote on The Atlantic’s website in June 2011, the New York Public Library “has reevaluated its role within the Internet information ecosystem and found a set of new identities” – as a “social network with three million active users” and as a “media outfit,” a “beacon in the carcass-strewn content landscape.” This panel examines how three different institutions – two public libraries and an academic library research unit – are helping to reshape the information ecosystem and creating new roles for themselves within it.

Kim Dulin from the Harvard Library Innovation Lab will discuss their work in developing a front-end web application, a “virtual front door,” for the proposed Digital Public Library of America (DPLA). As Dulin notes, this interface will allow the DPLA to become more than “just a collection”; it will be “a place users can go to discover works, engage with them, engage with one another, and share what they learn, know, and care about.” Deanna Lee, of the New York Public Library, will address several recent digital initiatives – the Biblion application, a John Cage “living archive,” a crowdsourced historical menu transcription project, and a new, more interactive library catalogue – that likewise change the ways and places in which patrons can access, experience, organize, and contribute to the collections. Linda E. Johnson will address the Brooklyn Public Library’s Broadband Technology and Opportunities Program and other of the library’s digital literacy initiatives. Finally, Shannon Mattern will identify common threads in the panelists’ presentations and offer prompts for discussion, which will address (1) how these projects provide opportunities for self-directed learning in new contexts; (2) how they evidence new thinking about pedagogy and epistemology; and (3) what the challenges and limitations of these projects might be, particularly as we attempt to implement them among traditionally underserviced populations and in the developing world.

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Magnetic [Media] Fields

Sep 24, ’11 2:22 AM

Uni @ New Amsterdam Market, 9/11/11

On September 11 I took a long walk along the East River to the New Amsterdam Market, near South Street Seaport, to experience the New York debut of Uni, the “portable reading room” developed by Leslie and Sam Davol (of Magnetic Fields fame), funded in large part via Kickstarter, and designed by Höweler + Yoon Architecture. According to the project’s website:

The Uni Project aims to do one thing and do it well: temporarily transform almost any available urban space into a public reading room and venue for learning. We start with the conviction that books and learning should be prominent, accessible, and part of what we expect at street-level in our cities.

To accomplish this, the Uni Project is creating a new kind of portable institution called the Uni, which we will install and operate in parks, plazas, farmers’ markets, and other available outdoor spaces in New York City beginning Fall 2011. The purpose of the Uni is to share books, showcase the act of learning, and improve public space. It is intended to be a new resource for the city, providing residents with a place to gather and contribute to their own well-being and advancement, as well as that of their neighborhood and city.

The collection, comprised of donated materials, is organized into topical “mini-collections” (focusing mainly on poetry, short stories, essays, art, children’s books, and reference) that have to fit within the structure’s 16″ cubes. I kind of like the intentional “design determinism” here; the spatial structure imposes an editorial mandate. In addition, individuals and groups are invited to “curate” modules on special topics. The New Amsterdam Market installation featured modules by 826NYC, New York Bound Books, and Furnace Press.

A few cubes are dedicated to interactive exhibits or activities, thus representing the integration of reading and making, thinking and doing. The Drawing Lab cube provided materials to make a zoetrope, while another offered inspiration and tools for patrons to write their own “flash fiction” — “snapshot” short stories. The Uni also aims to partner with other cultural and educational institutions (they collaborated with the Brooklyn Public Library during the Brooklyn Book Festival last weekend) to develop a “full schedule of public readings, talks, classes, afterschool programs, workshops, and screenings.”

I love how this project has the potential to put learning front and center in public space. As its creators explain, “What we see at street level in many urban neighborhoods does not reflect our aspirations for ourselves and our society. If we’re serious about having a well-educated society, let’s build cities where learning experiences are prominent, accessible, and enjoyable.” Through its innovative design Uni calls attention to itself, and it makes explicit the anomalousness of its program in the midst of highly commercialized, highly distracting environments. I’ve always thought public libraries served a similar function: they might not be in the streets in the same way that the Uni is, but at least the public library’s presence along the street — in buildings that are often among its cities’ grandest — demonstrates the tremendous value a community places in learning. The day our libraries disappear from the urban fabric is the day our cities lose their souls.

I’m convinced by the Uni creators’ explanation of the need for this project: its ability to make learning “prominent, accessible, and enjoyable”; its ability to provide opportunities for unique, spontaneous street-level experiences; its ability to serve as a partner to large institutions, allowing them to provide programming, often on a smaller, more accessible scale, outside their walls. Uni also has the potential to reconnect us with the book. According to Uni’s website: “Many urban residents, especially children, do not have easy access to books and places to read outside of school. Book stores are closing. Public libraries in many cities are struggling.”

That last sentence is the only thing that gives me pause about this project. What is Uni’s relationship to the public library? Is it an alternative, a competitor, a partner,…? There have been a whole host of on-the-street “guerilla library,” micro-library, and distributed library efforts (e.g., the Corner Libraries, Ourshelves, the Underground Library, this thing, etc.) over the past few years. How do they regard their relationship to their bigger, more place-bound institutional siblings?

A recent Wall Street Journal article quotes Queens librarian Lauren Comito, who regards these niche libraries as “perpetuat[ing] the myth that libraries are ‘a bunch of books on a shelf’ and that anyone could be a librarian, you just have to like to read.” She continues:

“At least one of these ‘DIY’ libraries is a doghouse full of books… Well, if people confuse [public libraries] with being just a bigger version of a doghouse full of books, then yes, they could weaken our finances by cheapening our value from a profession to a hobby.”

While I think these portable/distributed/guerilla/niche/alternative/atomized library projects are charming and exciting, and they have the potential to play really vital civic and cultural and educational roles, we can’t come to think that these ad hoc projects — however organized or systematized they might become — could serve as a replacement for our “struggling public libraries.” That big, lumbering institution, fallible though it is, serves critical custodial and infrastructural and civic functions that none of these pop-ups ever could. Could a pop-up manage an archive of thousand of linear feet of archival documents? Could it maintain an insanely complex technological infrastructure and subscriptions to thousands of online databases? Could it provide a physical space where the homeless, the latchkey kids, and the otherwise disenfranchised can come in from the cold on blustery days? No — we still need the public library proper to play these roles.

I’m not saying that these on-the-street projects do regard themselves as viable substitutes to the library-as-institution. I’m just saying it’s important that we consider what their relationship could be, so that both serve mutually beneficial roles.

Uni’s creators acknowledge that “cities need new solutions that are lighter-weight, more flexible, less expensive to operate, and better integrated into our patterns of daily life.” The nimbleness, the portability, the in-the-streetness of Uni offer lessons that our traditional public libraries can learn from. Uni also issues an important reminder of the significance of design — of creating a material infrastructure that enables this flexibility and efficiency. Uni could serve as an R&D lab for the existing public library; it could “provid[e] a place to experiment and learn new engagement strategies that work equally well “back home” in more traditional environments. The Uni [could support] existing institutions.”

I’m all for guerilla tactics, DIY urbanism, and other “interventionist” strategies (Mimi Zeiger’s series of “Interventionist’s Toolkit” articles on Places has been fantastic). But I think it’s important to remember that DIY isn’t necessarily counter-institutional, that it’s possible for institutions to be good guys. The public library is one such protagonist, and I’d hope that these DIY projects would aim to support the good work that the library has always done and to help the institution innovate its way back into “on the street” vitality.

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Library Tech Development Panel @ Mobility Shifts, 10/14

Aug 30, ’11 2:18 AM

I’ve mentioned this before, but it warrants repeating!: I’ve organized a panel [download flyer] on library-led technology development projects for the upcoming Mobility Shifts conference at The New School. Please join us! (but you’ll have to register for the conference first!)

*     *     *     *     *

The Library in Your Pocket (I’ll admit: I’ve never been good at titles!)
Theresa Lang Student Center, 2nd Floor, Arnhold Hall, 55 W 13th Street
Friday, October 14, 4 to 6pm

America’s public libraries, as the dominant narrative goes, afforded all people “the means of acquiring knowledge, self-education, [and] culture” (Oscar Bluemner, 1898). Libraries, in their dual – and often precariously balanced – commitments to cultural uplift and cultural outreach, have long been, at least in theory, places of self-directed, DIY learning. As materials once available only in the stacks have become ever more accessible in people’s homes and in their pockets, libraries’ strategies for cultural outreach, and for supporting patrons’ self-education, have evolved. Libraries are developing new ways for patrons to access their collections; drawing attention to underutilized collections; and helping users filter and contextualize material. Meanwhile, international organizations are using technology to bring libraries to regions of the world where they’d been scarce. And many of these initiatives are creating new opportunities for patrons to do things with or contribute to material in libraries’ collections.

Recent library-led technology development projects have attracted attention. As Alexis Madrigal wrote on The Atlantic’s website in June 2011, the New York Public Library “has reevaluated its role within the Internet information ecosystem and found a set of new identities” – as a “social network with three million active users” and as a “media outfit,” a “beacon in the carcass-strewn content landscape.” This panel examines how three different institutions – two public libraries and an academic library research unit – are helping to reshape the information ecosystem and creating new roles for themselves within it. Kim Dulin, Co-Director of the Harvard Library Innovation Lab, will discuss the Lab’s work in developing a front-end web application, a “virtual front door,” for the proposed Digital Public Library of America (DPLA). As Dulin notes, this interface will allow the DPLA to become more than “just a collection”; it will be “a place users can go to discover works, engage with them, engage with one another, and share what they learn, know, and care about.” Deanna Lee, Vice President of Communications and Marketing at the New York Public Library, will address several recent digital initiatives – the Biblion application, a John Cage “living archive,” a crowdsourced historical menu transcription project, and a new, more interactive library catalogue – that likewise change the ways and places in which patrons can access, experience, organize, and contribute to the collections. Linda E. Johnson, Interim Executive Director of the Brooklyn Public Library, will address the Library’s Broadband Technology and Opportunities Program and other of the library’s digital literacy initiatives. Finally, Shannon Mattern will identify common threads in the panelists’ presentations and offer prompts for discussion, which will address (1) how these projects provide opportunities for self-directed learning in new contexts; (2) how they evidence new thinking about pedagogy and epistemology; and (3) what the challenges and limitations of these projects might be, particularly as we attempt to implement them among traditionally underserviced populations and in the developing world.

*     *     *     *     *     *

I’ll also be participating on the Urban Research & Mobile Media panel (search for it here) the previous evening:

Thursday, October 13, 7:30-9:30 pm
Urban Research & Mobile Media
Theresa Lang Student and Community Center, Arnhold Hall, 55 West 13th St., 2nd floor

This panel discussion plans to articulate the possibilities and challenges of urban research in utilizing mobile formats for participatory engagement both inside and outside the classroom. As Urban Research Toolkit (URT) is being developed to maximize the benefit of two primary interfaces – web and mobile – panelists will present and discuss how information can be gathered, cross-reference and annotated amongst a wide community of citizens and researchers. The panel will showcase a collaborative, interdisciplinary project being developed both on mobile/web platforms to support the urban themed curricular, pedagogical and research at the New School University, as well as specific examples of student engagement and multi-disciplinary application.

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Libraries & DIY Learning Panel

Aug 9, ’11 2:49 PM

I’m really excited how this has taken shape: This summer I’ve been organizing a panel on library tech developments for the Mobility Shifts conference at The New School, and I’ve been fortunate to gather a fantastic group of experts — Kim Dulin from the Harvard Library Innovation Lab; Deanna Lee, VP of Communication at the NYPL; and Linda E. Johnson, Interim Director of the Brooklyn Public Library — to take part. The panel will take place on Friday, October 13, from 4 to 6pm in the Theresa Lang Center, on the 2nd floor at 55 West 13th Street.

Here’s our abstract:

America’s public libraries, as the dominant narrative goes, afforded all people “the means of acquiring knowledge, self-education, [and] culture” (Oscar Bluemner, 1898). Libraries, in their dual – and often precariously balanced – commitments to cultural uplift and cultural outreach, have long been, at least in theory, places of self-directed, DIY learning. As materials once available only in the stacks have become ever more accessible in people’s homes and in their pockets, libraries’ strategies for cultural outreach, and for supporting patrons’ self-education, have evolved. Libraries are developing new ways for patrons to access their collections; drawing attention to underutilized collections; and helping users filter and contextualize material. Meanwhile, international organizations are using technology to bring libraries to regions of the world where they’d been scarce. And many of these initiatives are creating new opportunities for patrons to do things with or contribute to material in libraries’ collections.

Recent library-led technology development projects have attracted attention. As Alexis Madrigal wrote on The Atlantic’s website in June 2011, the New York Public Library “has reevaluated its role within the Internet information ecosystem and found a set of new identities” – as a “social network with three million active users” and as a “media outfit,” a “beacon in the carcass-strewn content landscape.” This panel examines how three different institutions – two public libraries and an academic library research unit – are helping to reshape the information ecosystem and creating new roles for themselves within it. Kim Dulin from the Harvard Library Innovation Lab will discuss their work in developing a front-end web application, a “virtual front door,” for the proposed Digital Public Library of America (DPLA). As Dulin notes, this interface will allow the DPLA to become more than “just a collection”; it will be “a place users can go to discover works, engage with them, engage with one another, and share what they learn, know, and care about.” Deanna Lee, of the New York Public Library, will address several recent digital initiatives – the Biblion application, a John Cage “living archive,” a crowdsourced historical menu transcription project, and a new, more interactive library catalogue – that likewise change the ways and places in which patrons can access, experience, organize, and contribute to the collections. Linda E. Johnson will address the Brooklyn Public Library’s Broadband Technology and Opportunities Program and other of the library’s digital literacy initiatives. Finally, Shannon Mattern will identify common threads in the panelists’ presentations and offer prompts for discussion, which will address (1) how these projects provide opportunities for self-directed learning in new contexts; (2) how they evidence new thinking about pedagogy and epistemology; and (3) what the challenges and limitations of these projects might be, particularly as we attempt to implement them among traditionally underserviced populations and in the developing world.

You need to register for the conference to attend. I’ll post something about the conversation afterward for those who can’t be there.

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NYPL Apps & Games: Making “Extraordinary Futures”?

Jun 27, ’11 12:50 AM

[There was a bug somewhere in here, so I had to delete and repost.]

Saturday’s New York Times included an article by Joshua Brustein on the New York Public Library’s recent tech developments — specifically, its new Biblion “boundless library” (a reader/media viewer app that’s received mixed reviews, but which I’m still eager to play around with); its partnership with Bibliocommons to create a more interactive online catalogue; and its “Find the Future: The Game,” created by Jane McGonigal and partners for the centennial celebrations. Brustein isn’t crazy about Biblion, but he’s keen on the game:

I had more fun with the library’s other new app, a smartphone scavenger hunt called Find the Future. The game accompanies an exhibition by the same name that runs through December at the library’s headquarters, on Fifth Avenue.

The game requires players to seek out various objects or books in the library, and awards points when you snap a photograph of the accompanying Quick Response code, readable by phone cameras. The app takes several moments to process these points, trying to get users to spend some time with the objects rather than running wildly through the building.

It worked for me. I lost an hour snapping photographs of things like Charles Dickens’s cat-claw letter opener and a draft of the Declaration of Independence, and still made it only about halfway through the first of the game’s nine chapters.

Whether or not “it worked” depends on what you regard as the game’s goal. Is it enough to convince (onsite or online) visitors to “spend some time” with the objects and snap some photos? McGonical seems to have set her sights much higher. I wrote about this back during the centennial weekend, on May 22. I’m all for the NYPL — and all libraries — getting involved in tech and software development in an attempt to attract new users, highlight underused collections, help users access and use their collections in new ways, etc. I say this because I don’t want to sound like a curmudgeon when I admit that I have serious doubts that the game did, or can, live up to the promises McGonigal made for it. Don’t get me wrong: I think gaming is a great way to get people interested and involved in libraries — but I think we have to be realistic about what such projects can accomplish. I would’ve much rather heard the library’s take on the game’s function than McGonigal’s overblown rhetoric.

Here’s what I wrote last month, with some minor edits:

*     *     *     *     *

via http://bit.ly/igByG9

…Find the Future: The Game, meanwhile, encourages decontextualization of a different sort. This game, commissioned for the centennial and created by Jane McGonigal, Natron Baxter and Playmatics, “brings visitors to the Library together with players around the world to tap into the creative power of the Library’s collections” (via About). The game began on May 20, when 500 gamers (aged 18 and up) were invited to an all-night “lock-in” during which they “explore[d] the building’s 70 miles of stacks, and, using laptops and smartphones, follow[ed] clues to such treasures as the Library’s copy of the Declaration of Independence in Thomas Jefferson’s hand” (via NYPL). Upon finding each object, players were prompted to write an “artifact story,” a “short-personal essay inspired by their quest.” These essays were then gathered into a book — “a collection of 100 ways to make history and change the future” — that will be added to the library’s collection.


[Added June 26, 2011]

The next day, the game was opened up to the rest of the world. Anyone could access Find the Future: The Game online to pursue their own “quests” for library artifacts, write their own narratives, and collect “artifact powers.”

If only real-world research were this exciting! If only one could “find the wisdom to teach and inspire others — and the perspective to understand the world around you” by simply clicking a link!

I tried it myself. My first “artifact” choice was “Writing on the Wall,” a John Milton quotation inscribed above the doorway to the Rose Reading Room: “A good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.” Through an automatically advancing slideshow, I learned that Milton “made history by turning the fall of man into an epic poem,” that he is “one of the great poets of the English language,” that he is most famous for writing (while blind) “Paradise Lost,” and that the quotation is drawn from Areopagitica, which Milton write in 1644, “opposing censorship.” Armed with this insight, I’m then prompted to write my own artifact story:

The quote above the entrance to the Rose Reading Room has inspired many generations of visitors with words that are impossible to forget once you’ve read them. These people went on to become famous inventors, artists and leaders who changed the world. What would you say to inspire the next hundred years’ visitors? Imagine The NYPL has asked YOU to update this quote. They will put YOUR new saying over the entrance for the next 100 years. Write your own quote that you want to plant in the minds of millions of people.

That’s it? Armed with a few superficial facts about Milton I’m now prepared to inspire “the next hundred years’ visitors”? Do I really have enough context to be charged with such a tremendous responsibility?

My choice of inscription: “Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards” – Huxley

The game, McGonigal says, is “designed to empower players to find inspiration for their own extraordinary futures by bringing them face-to-face with the writings and personal objects of people who made an extraordinary difference in the past.” What does it mean to come “face-to-face” with these artifacts? The lucky 500 who played on-site on May 20 were able to encounter the original artifacts (although I imagine some were more busy snapping QR codes than inspecting the artifacts they marked) — but are those brief, superficial encounters sufficient to convey the “extraordinary difference[s]” these people made in the past? Is it enough for me to know that the Gutenberg Bible was the first book to be printed on a movable type printing press; that “its publication in 1455 is considered by many to be the single most important innovation of the last millennium” (why?); that before the press, books were copied by hand or by using woodcut letters; that Gutenberg devised a system using metal letters that could be quickly rearranged and printed using specially-mixed inks; that there are fewer than 50 known copies of the Gutenberg Bible in existence, and that the NYPL has two of them? Do these facts then qualify me to write something that “everyone on Earth” can read?

The Gutenberg Bible marked the start of the printing revolution, in which messages could be spread to millions worldwide through the mass production of printed books. Now modern technology allows us to message thousands of people instantaneously. New advances could bring even more widespread communication. If you could write something that everyone on the planet could read, what would it be? Write a message that could be read by everyone on Earth.

The game shifts abruptly from an historical to a contemporary context, without explaining how to responsibly make that temporal transition. It shifts equally abruptly from a focus on the artifact to an egocentric focus. “How would you like to shape the future?” The prompts for these “artifact stories” barely reference the artifacts’ historical context. They barely address the social responsibilities inherent in, or methods required for, making such consequential decisions. [Added June 26:] This is particularly problematic because the game — this one and others that will inevitably be developed in emulation — have the potential to appeal to audiences far outside the pilot test’s 18+ gamer demographic. How, for instance, will school-aged children deal with these important epistemological, methodological, and ethical issues — or how will they know that such issues exist if no one poses the difficult questions to them?

“Like every game I make,” McGonigal says,” Find the Future: The Game” has one goal: to turn players into superempowered, hopeful individuals with real skills and ideas to help them change the world.” I can see how this game cultivates hope and empowerment: it’s fun, you win points, you acquire super-human cognitive powers and affective capacities by simply clicking on links, your opinion is sought on matters of grave importance, etc. But in what context is this play taking place? What skills are being developed? What ideas, aside from cursory factual information (how can you claim that the Gutenberg Bible is the “single most important innovation of the last millennium” without explaining why?!), are being circulated here?

If gaming is the future of education, as many have claimed, I still need to be convinced that gaming provides sufficient “context” for all those skills and ideas it’s purporting to cultivate. I’m still not sure that gaming is the appropriate model for “help[ing] people change the world” — when so much world-changing work isn’t fun, doesn’t win you any points or super-powers, and carries responsibilities that a game simply can’t simulate. I’m not doubting gaming’s potential; I just think we have to be realistic about when it’s an appropriate tool and what it can accomplish.

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NYPL @ 100 Part 2: Speaking of Context… Shuffle + Find the Future: The Game

May 22, ’11 8:53 PM

The main event for me in this weekend’s NYPL centennial celebrations, was Shuffle, a performance piece staged in the DeWitt Wallace Periodical Room. A collaboration between theater ensemble Elevator Repair Service, statistician Mark Hansen, and artist Ben Rubin, the work lived up to its name on multiple levels: it shuffled texts, temporalities, spatialities, genres, etc.

Shuffle. Photo: Ariana Smart Truman - Via NYPL: http://bit.ly/lJgGfO

The script was generated algorithmically, in real-time, by pulling from the scripts of three previous ERS productions — Gatz, The Sound and the Fury (April Seventh, 1928), and The Select (The Sun Also Rises) – and the literary texts that inspired them. The performers accessed the ever-evolving script via iPhones tucked into print copies of Fitzgerald, Faulkner, and Hemingway’s books. All the while, the group, dressed in their librarians’ best, shuffled throughout the periodicals room, champagne flutes in hand. The pace and placement of their actions seemed to vary in relation to the speed of the script: small groups might congregate and chat leisurely at the circulation desk, while a colleague would bolt from one end of the room to the other, in response to some apparent reference emergency. Others performed the signature actions of librarians: one might rifle through a card catalogue, extracting and organizing slips of paper with no apparent rhyme or reason; another might peck away at a typewriter; while still another might scramble up and down the stairs while her colleagues amble or dart through the stacks. The audience, meanwhile, was free to wander around the room, watch the script unfurl on monitors positioned at each of the library tables, peruse print-outs listing a selection of the text snippets fed through the algorithm, and come and go at will. While I was there, the algorithm “selected” a long string of phrases comparing two male figures — “he was [a], while he was [b]“; two babies in strollers, who happened to be conveniently located next to the actor algorithmically chosen to read this section, were subject to a prolonged cataloguing of their virtues and vices.

In short, the multiple overlapping contexts of this performance were constantly shuffled.  “The text – arranged into new strings of sentences and phrases – creates a compelling look at literature that we thought we knew,” explained director John Collins. What’s more, “Shuffle [blurs] the boundaries of performance space, private, and public space,” Collins adds, “and [is] an exciting way to experience the beautiful and majestic building.” By removing and remixing familiar codes and contexts, Shuffle shifted our engagement with these classic texts and spaces and genres of performance. This was a productive decontextualization.

via http://bit.ly/igByG9

Find the Future: The Game, meanwhile, encourages decontextualization of a different sort. This game, commissioned for the centennial and created by Jane McGonigal, Natron Baxter and Playmatics, “brings visitors to the Library together with players around the world to tap into the creative power of the Library’s collections” (via About). The game began on May 20, when 500 gamers (aged 18 and up) were invited to an all-night “lock-in” during which they “explore[d] the building’s 70 miles of stacks, and, using laptops and smartphones, follow[ed] clues to such treasures as the Library’s copy of the Declaration of Independence in Thomas Jefferson’s hand” (via NYPL). Upon finding each object, players were prompted to write an “artifact story,” a “short-personal essay inspired by their quest.” These essays were then gathered into a book — “a collection of 100 ways to make history and change the future” — that will be added to the library’s collection.


[Added June 26, 2011]

The next day, the game was opened up to the rest of the world. Anyone could access Find the Future: The Game online to pursue their own “quests” for library artifacts, write their own narratives, and collect “artifact powers.”

If only real-world research were this exciting! If only one could “find the wisdom to teach and inspire others — and the perspective to understand the world around you” by simply clicking a link!

I tried it myself. My first “artifact” choice was “Writing on the Wall,” a John Milton quotation inscribed above the doorway to the Rose Reading Room: “A good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.” Through an automatically advancing slideshow, I learned that Milton “made history by turning the fall of man into an epic poem,” that he is “one of the great poets of the English language,” that he is most famous for writing (while blind) “Paradise Lost,” and that the quotation is drawn from Areopagitica, which Milton write in 1644, “opposing censorship.” Armed with this insight, I’m then prompted to write my own artifact story:

The quote above the entrance to the Rose Reading Room has inspired many generations of visitors with words that are impossible to forget once you’ve read them. These people went on to become famous inventors, artists and leaders who changed the world. What would you say to inspire the next hundred years’ visitors? Imagine The NYPL has asked YOU to update this quote. They will put YOUR new saying over the entrance for the next 100 years. Write your own quote that you want to plant in the minds of millions of people.

That’s it? Armed with a few superficial facts about Milton I’m now prepared to inspire “the next hundred years’ visitors”? Do I really have enough context to be charged with such a tremendous responsibility?

My choice of inscription: “Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards” – Huxley

The game, McGonigal says, is “designed to empower players to find inspiration for their own extraordinary futures by bringing them face-to-face with the writings and personal objects of people who made an extraordinary difference in the past.” What does it mean to come “face-to-face” with these artifacts? The lucky 500 who played on-site on May 20 were able to encounter the original artifacts (although I imagine they were more busy photographing QR codes than inspecting the artifacts they marked) — but are those brief, superficial encounters sufficient to convey the “extraordinary difference[s]” these people made in the past? Is it enough for me to know that the Gutenberg Bible was the first book to be printed on a movable type printing press; that “its publication in 1455 is considered by many to be the single most important innovation of the last millennium” (why?); that before the press, books were copied by hand or by using woodcut letters; that Gutenberg devised a system using metal letters that could be quickly rearranged and printed using specially-mixed inks; that there are fewer than 50 known copies of the Gutenberg Bible in existence, and that the NYPL has two of them? Do these facts then qualify me to write something that “everyone on Earth” can read?

The Gutenberg Bible marked the start of the printing revolution, in which messages could be spread to millions worldwide through the mass production of printed books. Now modern technology allows us to message thousands of people instantaneously. New advances could bring even more widespread communication. If you could write something that everyone on the planet could read, what would it be? Write a message that could be read by everyone on Earth.

The game shifts abruptly from an historical to a contemporary context, without explaining how to responsibly make that temporal transition. It shifts equally abruptly from a focus on the artifact to an egocentric focus. “How would you like to shape the future?” The prompts for these “artifact stories” barely reference the artifacts’ historical context. They barely address the social responsibilities inherent in, or methods required for, making such consequential decisions.

“Like every game I make,” McGonigal says,” Find the Future: The Game” has one goal: to turn players into superempowered, hopeful individuals with real skills and ideas to help them change the world.” I can see how this game cultivates hope and empowerment: it’s fun, you win points, you acquire super-human cognitive powers and affective capacities by simply clicking on links, your opinion is sought on matters of grave importance, etc. But in what context is this play taking place? What skills are being developed? What ideas, aside from cursory factual information (how can you claim that the Gutenberg Bible is the “single most important innovation of the last millennium” without explaining why?), are being circulated here?

If gaming is the future of education, as many have claimed, I have yet to be convinced that gaming provides sufficient “context” for all those skills and ideas it’s purporting to cultivate. I’m still not sure that gaming is the appropriate model for “help[ing] people change the world” — when so much world-changing work isn’t fun, doesn’t win you any points or super-powers, and carries responsibilities that a game simply can’t simulate.

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The History of Universality, Technological Determinism, and Other Deep Thoughts

Mar 27, ’11 7:49 PM

This weekend I attended the “Media Histories: Epistemology, Materiality, Temporality” conference at Columbia. Now, when I say “attended,” I mean to say that I was physically present, in room 501 Schermerhorn Hall, for most of the sessions. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to attend Jonathan Crary’s keynote on Thursday evening. I also missed Joseph Vogl’s keynote on Friday, because I went downtown for Diana Taylor’s keynote at the Memory conference at The New School. And I just couldn’t make Saturday morning happen, so, sadly, I missed Erhard Schüttpelz, Weihong Bao, and Marilyn Ivy. Even though I was bodily present for all the other panels, I can’t say that I was mentally all there. As I explained a few weeks ago, in regard to my experience at SCMS, there’s a limit to my concentration — particularly when the object of concentration is a 45-minute scholarly presentation…or two or three in succession. I found myself much more engaged with the first presenter on each panel, and a little less attentive to the second and third presenters. Regardless of the order of presentation, however, several of the presentations seemed to me much better suited for the page than the ear (a valid observation at a conference on epistemology and materiality, I’d say!); I would’ve much preferred to read these papers, and I hope I’ll have the opportunity to do so at some point.

Those presentations that most stuck with me were Adrian Johns’ “Unpacking the Universal Library: The Morals of Massive Research Collections, 1810-2010″ and John Durham Peters’s “Two Cheers for Technological Determinism.” I was also inspired by Jimena Canales’s “A Tenth of a Second”; her book has been on my “wish list” for a while, and I’ve finally decided to order it. And Mary Ann Doane’s “Lost Time: Technologies of the Gap” reinforced my admiration for her earlier writings on time, indexicality, and cinema.

Job Koelewijn's Mobius bookshelf via BoingBoing: http://bit.ly/hv9ipz

Johns’s presentation was particularly satisfying because he essentially covered, in 30 minutes, much of the same terrain we’re covering in my “Libraries, Archives & Databases” graduate seminar this semester; it served as a welcome reassurance that I did a pretty good job of constructing that syllabus! He called for a historicization of the concept of universality. The dream of the universal library of course has a long history — but various epochs’ notions of universality are tied to their distinctive understanding of how books work; of the economics of book production, distribution, and consumption; of how reading takes place (i.e., what does it mean that, today, books are scanned not to be read by people, but to be read by machines?); of how aspirations toward “placeless” information are perhaps paradoxically tied to the construction of library places.

The Q&A after the presentations, led by Ben Kafka, raised interesting questions regarding the significance of ordering and classifying library materials; these are not only epistemological concerns, but also moral ones. And what of the new librarian for the digital library? Is she a human or an inanimate aggregator? According to Johns, librarians advocate for themselves as professionals who perform important skills-based, critical educational roles. We’d all agree that this should be the case — that librarians should serve as “information mediators,” and patrons should rely on them as such — but will this be the case? Or will patrons simply turn to aggregators whose algorithms for selection we don’t understand? These questions of “library morality” have long been woven into library history; just look at the Progressive Era library and its aspiration to serve as an instrument of uplift. How the library aspired to function, and how patrons used it, are two separate issues.

As a closeted McLuhan sympathizer, I was especially psyched by Peters’s “Two Cheers” polemic. Peters traced the history of “technological determinism” — particularly its use as an insult (calling someone a technological determinist, Geoffrey Winthrop-Young says, is akin to saying he likes to strangle puppies!) or its invocation as a preemptive disclaimer (“Of course I do not mean to lapse here into technological determinism!”). He traces the concept through Thorstein Veblen’s use of the German technik (see also this), to 20s and 30s debates about economic history, to Lucian Febvre, to Mumford’s technic, to McLuhan, to SCOT and actor-network theory. Peters argues that fear of technological determinism rests in part on a “suspicious subject/object distinction,” a failure to recognize that human are “always-already technical beings.” We often fail to realize that “to say that technology creates possibilities is not to say that it causes them.” Fear of technological determinism “hinders big thoughts.” Media studies is necessarily interested in media shape, form, delivery, etc., and to resist exploring and arguing for these factors’ potential roles in influencing social change or shaping history, is to “giv[e] up critique.”

An immensely inspiring talk.

Redeeming McLuhan?

 

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We’ve Got the Archive Fever… Achoo!

Mar 26, ’11 2:32 AM

Awww! via Aureusbay on Flickr: http://bit.ly/fOX2Ih

My plan was to try to bounce between three great conferences happening in the city this weekend: the Media Histories: Epistemology, Materiality, Temporality conference at Columbia, the Memory conference at The New School, and the Mapping New Media symposium at the Bard Graduate Center. Alas, I missed the mapping symposium (thanks to the wonderful Tanya Toft for generously sharing her notes with me!), which left me to spend two days thinking about universal libraries, archives, drawings, paperwork, medium-specificity, seriality, temporality, memory, preservation, epistemology, materiality, and myriad related “ities.” What a luxury! It’s rare that I can spend a whole day — let alone two — thinking about the ideas that most captivate me. Still, I must admit: all that archive fever is enough to give one an archive headache! (groan)

But wait: it’s actually such references to “archive fever” that trigger a slight uneasiness. Over the past couple years I’ve noticed that a lot of people are appropriating Derrida’s phrase to refer to a supposed infatuation with archiving — a passion for assembling and sorting and storing; a compulsion to do things like organize houseplants in retired card catalogues (which I’d totally do, by the way, if I had a card catalogue sitting around); a tendency to refer to our hard drives and junk drawers as “archives.”  ”We’re cuckoo for collecting!”

But that’s not what “archive fever” is about, really.

via pcorreia on Flickr: http://bit.ly/eC2Z2o

 

Derrida’s lecture is titled Mal d’archive, which, Carolyn Steedman argues, would be much more appropriately translated as trouble…, misfortune…, pain…, hurt…, sickness…, wrong…, sin…, badness…, or evil of the archive, rather than the “faintly comic ‘fever’ of the English translation.”[1] But even if that off-the-mark title translation escapes us, Derrida’s description of the mal d’archive in the book’s Exergue should clue us in to the fact that this mal isn’t some cutesy fad: it’s an “irrepressible desire to return to the origin” — one linked as much to the pleasure principle [2] as it is to the death drive.

Not so cute. I’m not cuckoo for that.

X

[1] Carolyn Steedman, “Something She Called a Fever: Michelet, Derrida, and Dust” The American Historical Review 106:4 (October 2001): 1159-1180.

[2] Side note: principle/principal are homophones that lend themselves to funny mix-ups. Consider, for instance, what a Pleasure Principal would be. I bet that’d be a popular job :-)

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