Depicting The Library of obscurity

27/01/2014

Blog Entry 15:

In this entry I will explore and portray how I perceive “the Library” in the short story The Library of Babel by Jorge Luis Borges, including notation and visual elements (mainly in sketch form).

Extra reading The Library of Babel by Jorge Luis Borges follow the link below:
 http://www.thecriticalpoint.net/index_files/libraryofbabel.pdf
(Borges, 1944)

Initial Notation on aspects of “the Library”:

Hexagonal galleries with floors that can be seen through - like black pool tower - or repetitive imagery getting smaller and smaller

Each gallery has a ventilation shaft bounded by a low railing

A 3d hexagon
Repetitive pattern?
Perspective drawings

Five book shelves to each side does not equal 20 - does each side mean that the room is used as a square room despite its hexagonal shape
4x5=20 so 2 sets of shelves are along a flat wall and 2 sets are adjacent to corners?
But the book shelves line 4 of the hexagonal sides - the arrangement of each gallery is the same so would they always be the same?

Initial imagery:

initial library ideas page

 The above image is a set of simple idea images in response to what I imagine a room in The Liobrary to look like along with other rough ideas.

Library mood board

A mood board with sections of ideas of aspects or objects that may exist within the library, this mood board deals with:

• Book shelves - I imagine them to be old and worn in some hexagons and updated in others
• Books - I imagine all books in the library to be old and possibly ornate due to their being ther since the dawn of time
• Objects - I have looked at objects in the library which may also be hexagonal like the rooms
• Bird's eye view - all floors can be seen though into an everlasing number of rooms above and below, so I have looked at imagery that may depict this idea, this also gives me ideas about privacy and that people in the rooms above and below will be able to see what others are doing
• Fashion - I have looked at hexagonal items of jewellery and clothing that follow the hexagonal theme 
• Nature - I have looked at areas of nature where the hexagon occurs 

Hexagon repeat pattern 1 (with crimson hexagon) Adobe Photoshop

Hexagon repreat pattern 2 Adobe Photoshop                                      

I have created an obvious simple repeat pattern on Adobe Photoshop of the hexagon shape - Could this be used as a map for each room? I have added a crimson hexagon in the top image to potentially portray a map to the crimson hexagon.

The Library steps mood board

Sketch of a natural hexagon spiral staircase

After looking into areas of my mood board that most interested me I thought of the hexagonal rocks which are fromed naturally in places in the world. I created a second mood board around this idea looking at spiral stair cases, natural steps and the natural hexagon rock formations. I then created the above sketch from combining ideas from my mood board.

The beehive sketch

This sketch is also based on natural forms that occur in hexagonal froms from my original mood board. Due to the library being inhabited by so few people I have left most hexagons empty to depict this.

The Natural Library room sketch

This sketch depicts my idea of what a room in the library might have looked at the dawn of time. My idea is linked to carbon emissions and global warming, which nature is suffering from - before humans destroyed nature, the library could have had grass floors and hexagonal flowers but now it is desolate. I have suggested that the book shelves are trees that have been a natural part of the library since the beginning.


Primary photographs taken by myself of Britannia Mill Library:

Being as one of the main aspects of the story is the library atmosphere, I decided to get some primary/ first hand research of a library. The photographs I took (with permission from Britannia Mill library staff) helped me to get a feel for the library environment and consider aspects such as how books are kept and cataloged.

I often find that when illustrating books or stories, I want to consider absolutely every aspect of said story, I also enjoy using artistic licence to eventuate areas of a story which have not been fully detailed - to do this I feel that I need to gather as much research as possible on general and more specific areas I wish to depict.