Archive for February, 2012
Destined for Ink? A Call to Action: Let’s Think Beyond the Book
Humans have for millennia created tools that augment and improve our lives. From the weapons of the Bronze Age to bartering beads and paper currency, each tool changes how we interact with our world. As these tools become commonplace, they are harder to deconstruct, but it is important to remember that we made them; we designed them to help us know more, see more, achieve more. From virtual libraries to virtual reality, from the codex to the digital book, the tools we have created to transmit information make it possible for more people to make more astounding discoveries. But technologist …
Shuffling Toward the New Sublime: Elevator Repair Service and the Literary Mashup
On two May afternoons last year, as sun-seeking New Yorkers gathered at cafe tables in Bryant Park to enjoy the seasonable weather, a troupe of actors took their place behind the circulation desk in the DeWitt Wallace Periodical Room at NYPL’s Central Research Library, turned on their iPods, opened their books, and got ready to “Shuffle.” This was Elevator Repair Service, an experimental theater company whose work “combine[s] elements of slapstick comedy, hi-tech and lo-tech design, both literary and found text, found objects and discarded furniture, and the group’s own highly developed style of choreography.” (Source: Elevator Repair Service, …
