Library Art of the Day: Light Beams for Every Search in Wyoming

What kind of books are Wyoming residents interested in today?

A new art project in the Teton County Library, "Filament Mind," by Brian W. Brush and Yong Ju Lee of the E/B Office, displays that information in the most spectacular fashion.* Five miles of fiber-optic cable connect a central computer to the nearly 1,000 classes of the Dewey Decimal System, from "Newspapers in Scandinavia" to "Etching and Drypoint."

When a search is made in any Wyoming public library, the cables light up with categories corresponding to the search content. In total, the project constitutes a sort of visual archive of curiosity.

Photo by David Agnello

"The installation aspires to illustrate how community is cultivated through the delicate weaving of our thoughts, desires, and questions exchanged and imparted on each other and our environments," the architects write.

Below, a couple of videos show Filament Mind come to life.

Eric Daft, Fisher Creative

Eric Daft, Fisher Creative

All images courtesy of E/B Office.

H/T: Laughing Squid.

*Correction: The architect's name is Brian W. Brush, not Bush.