Infinity = Zero
Alyssa Moxley (US 2014)
31 min
Audio Walks for Armchair Listening Mini Series
In Jorge Luis Borges’ story The Library of Babel, the world is made up of an infinite network of hexagonal libraries containing all possible iterations of books with 410 pages and 22 characters. Books can resemble each other in all but one letter. Some volumes can be read in multiple languages with entirely different interpretations. Others have meaning only coincidentally. The librarians who inhabit this world are overwhelmed with information, most of which is nonsense. In a search for deliberate meaning, many wander through the libraries in a quest for the Crimson Hexagon, a library containing books of small format, illustrated, magical, and containing revelatory insight.
Infinity = Zero produces the conditions for radio listeners to sculpt senseless cacophonies into form through their movement as they walk the halls and navigate obscure corners of the stairwells of 37 South Wabash, Chicago. In a participative choreography beginning at The Joan Flasch Artist Book Collection in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, listeners will take the path of those who search for the archival material of insight and meaning within books, people, objects, and architecture. Fractured and collaged narratives create ambiguous worlds where the fictional world of hexagonal libraries interacts with the environment of the Sharp building’s hallways and archival collections.