About the Project- About Us
- The Making of the Library Machine
- The Library Machine in Action
- Contact Us
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About the Project
- What happens when an artist and a librarian re-imagine a library reference desk?
Part library reference desk, part fortune-teller booth, part performance, the Library Machine mashes up intuition, play, accident, and artmaking with the expert research skills of a librarian. Participants are invited to submit a question to the Library Machine by writing it on a slip of paper and dropping it into the machine’s questions slot. A librarian/artist collaboration inside the machine will produce a one-of-a-kind “answer” on the spot.
The Library Machine made its debut at the IACRL Conference, March 16, 2012.
---------------------------------------Library Machine FAQ
What is a library machine?
With your participation (thank you!) we are exploring parts of the research process that tend to be undervalued or dismissed, like intuition, play, subjectivity, randomness, failure, and creativity.
What’s inside?
Jenn + Vicki, a typewriter, a record player, a laptop, an iPad, scissors, paper, paint, stickers, labels, books, colored pencils, glue sticks, yarn, envelopes, needle and thread, cardboard, index cards, and a bunch of 35mm slides.What can I ask?
Anything! No need to restrict yourself to questions with a right answer, or even questions asked via words. Get weird. Draw us something if you like.
What will my answer look like?
We don’t know yet, but it will be handmade, and we will put it in an envelope with your name on it.
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About Us
Vicki Fowler is an artist whose work is steeped in performance, poetry (with intentional misspellings of double meaning), drawing, food, sculpture, intuitive forms of research as an art form, and blurring the lines between art and life. She works from memory of the past, feels for the present and awaits her guides, sometimes in the form of an angelic librarian, to light the way of her process. Samplings of her work can be experienced by way of her instigated holistic response dinner series, Whole Artist, or in recent publications such as Emergency INDEX 2012.
vickifowler.com
wholeartistdinners.com
Jenn Smith is an artist and a reference librarian at the Flaxman Library, School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She recently made a video about library therapy, started an Etsy shop called Upper Tiny, and has been collaborating with faculty and students at SAIC to find out how artists define research.
thejennsmith.com
libraryguides.saic.edu
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The making of the Library Machine
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The Library Machine in action
