Making Visible the Invisible

As I stand in front of a line of screens, I assume they are a cataloging or informational installation. I am still looking for the art piece. The man behind the desk excitedly tells me that the screens are in fact the art piece. He describes how they cycle through the names of books checked out that day, the various numbers of items checked out and their categories, a stream of numbers from the Dewey decimal system, and a few other items of library data that scroll across the screen. As he talks, the timeline of book names and times begins to slide by. I take a few pictures, thank the man, and we walk away. I file away the "art" for later analysis.

The Seattle library is impressive in scope and appearance; it does not require art pieces to back up its artistic value. The "art" seems to bog down the library. Upon entering the library, visitors are struck by the highlighter yellow elevators, the blood red meeting rooms, the myriad rows of books and computers. In my opinion, the addition of the egg projections and the scrolling book names is superfluous and even detrimental to the atmosphere of the library. Jeremy, Xitlalic and I walked out of the library together, having secured our photographs and information, and we talked about what we had seen. I think it was Xitlalic who hit on exactly what I was thinking as we left: "The library is a place for books, not art."