27th
Etching by Eric Desmazieres for The Library of Babel by Jorge Luis Borges (source: boiteaoutils)
“Through the years, a man peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, tools, stars, horses, and people. Shortly before its death, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the image of his own face.” — Jorge Luis Borges
“The Library of Babel. This story is a conscientious description of the library as “a sphere whose exact center is any one of its hexagons and whose circumference is inaccessible,” that host the totality of books composed with all letter combinations possible. The Library is thus questioning the notion of the infinite and its paradoxical spatial application. I intentionally write “paradoxical” because the infinite seems to me as illustrating a conflict between mathematics and physics. The latter can only suggest the infinite without actually describing it whereas, mathematics is a language based on the idea of the infinite. Returning to our field of study, architecture originally belongs to the universe of physics; computation tends to insert mathematics into it and therefore the notion of the infinite.
The only limit to an architecture generated by mathematics is the finite characteristics of its generator: the computer. However, simply the idea of relating architecture to one or several equations is to allow itself to acquire an infinite dimension. Such an idea obviously tackles the issue of its physicality and therefore allows architecture to exist through other means than within the finite amount of the physical world’s particles.
In the same way Borges succeeded to create an infinite world thanks to words and to the reader’s imagination, computation allows the creation of an infinite architecture thanks to its relation to mathematics.”
“The universe (which other calls the Library) is composed of an indefinite and perhaps infinite of hexagonal galleries, with vast air shafts between, surrounded by very low railings. From any of the hexagons one can see, interminably, the upper and lower floors. The distribution of the galleries is invariable. Twenty shelves, five long shelves per side, cover all the sides except two; their height, which is the distance from floor to ceiling, scarcely exceeds that of a normal book case. One of the free sides leads to a narrow hallway which opens onto another gallery, identical to the first and to all the rest. To the left and right of the hallway there are two very small closets. In the first, one may sleep standing up; in the other, satisfy one’s fecal necessities. Also through here passes a spiral stairway, which sinks abysmally and soars upwards to remote distances. (…)
And yet those who picture the world as unlimited forget that the number of possible books is not. I will be bold enough to suggest this solution to the ancient problem: The Library is unlimited but periodic. If an eternal traveler should journey in any direction, he would find after untold centuries that the same volumes are repeated in the same disorder—which, repeated, becomes order: the Order. My solitude is cheered by that elegant hope.”
— Jorge Luis Borges, The Library of Babel, Boston: David R. Godine, 200, Ficcionnes (1949), Rayo 2008.
— Posted by Léopold Lambert in Computational labyrinth or Towards a Borgesian Architecture
