Michel Serres refers to a “crevasse” that emerged as the font of the great monotheistic religions and became the home of Greek philosophy and of Greek and Arab science. It stretches from the city of Memphis by the Nile to Olynthus, Greece via Nippur, Iraq. These were the lands of biblical prophets, of both Christianity and of Islam; and also witnessed the birth of writing, money and the manufacture of iron and bronze.
A point on the Earth’s surface is pulled by the weight of all the library’s books as latitude and longitude coordinates. Its resting place is one where every book has influenced it: 58°57’56.3″N 39°16’57.8″W or 480 km southeast of Greenland. Between the coordinates of some 10,400 titles, a line marks a crevasse of the library: one lake to another.
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Looking southeast towards the center of the library. A poem from information deemed as places by an Information Extraction Pipeline.
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Crevasse between two Swiss lakes, altitude 3386 m.a.s.l. [detail].
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Floating roof along the crevasse [detail]. It encapsulates the geographic center of the library.
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‘Nuances and Details in a Curved Stream’ [Film Still], HD video, 02:10 mins.
November 2017
Text: Valle Medina & Benjamin Reynolds