Babel >>
Simon Biggs
Speaking in Dewey Decimal tongues.
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||| HIAFF 3.0 | university of colorado | department of art and art history | digital arts area | in conjunction with alt-x | atlas | blurr
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[Intro] Babel is a gorgeous 3-d site of linked incoming, outgoing and ongoing web
addresses as represented by numbers based on the Dewey Decimal system. Simon
Biggs has tied together two mythologies; the ancient Biblical story in which
God confuses the previously unified language of a civilization that arrogantly
presumes to build a tower so tall it threatens God’s space, and the
numerological. Biggs was inspired by Jorge Luis Borges' story, "Library of
Babel", in which "infinitude of books - of information - paradoxically lends
itself to incertitude. One can never be sure that one has the best or the
latest source on any given topic." On the Dewey Decimal System: "... each area
of knowledge can be defined as a number and the space between each numbered
area is infinitely divisible. This allows the cataloguing system to be both
navigable in its subject headings whilst able to contain an infinite number of
potential entries in the catalogue." Everyone has a story hidden in a number.
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