“The Infinite Library is an ongoing project by Daniel Gustav Cramer and Haris Epaminonda.
It is primarily an expanding archive of books, each created out of pages of one or more found books and bound anew. The online catalogue serves as an index.”
I was drawn to this by the close relationship to the Borges story, The Library of Babel, an infinite library made up of hexagonal rooms, in which there exists every combination imaginable of letters and words. Different combinations convey differing meanings.
“In truth, the Library includes all verbal structures, all variations permitted by the twenty-five orthographical symbols, but not a single example of absolute nonsense. It is useless to observe that the best volume of the many hexagons under my administration is entitled The Combed Thunderclap and another The Plaster Cramp and another Axaxaxas mlö.
These phrases, at first glance incoherent, can no doubt be justified in a cryptographical or allegorical manner; such a justification is verbal and, ex hypothesi, already figures in the Library.
I cannot combine some characters
dhcmrlchtdj
which the divine Library has not foreseen and which in one of its secret tongues do not contain a terrible meaning.”
– Borges
For me this incarnation, the visual form of the infinite library, champions creativity; it looks gorgeous and the re-use and recontextualisation of the images are like a source of endless inspiration – you could have the same book with one image misplaced, and it could convey a wholly different meaning. There’s a weightiness, and an astounding simplicity too.
Awesome. For the infinite library click here, for Borges’ fiction, click here.
