Situations for 10.31.23 (aka happenings, events, gatherings, performances) are listed below.
AI vs Analog
Tuesday: 10:00 am - 8:30 pm, open to anyone to participate, drop in anytime
6th floor Sharp
AI has the ability to create images that are entirely fiction, but what does it do when asked to re-create an image that already exists? How close to a perfect copy can it generate when all it has to work with is language? What visual ideas does it understand and which does it still struggle with?
Re-create the Image:
1. Select a single picture file from the stack.
2. Attempt to recreate the image using an AI Image generator open on the laptop (image will also be projected for others to see this process).
3. Once you have generated the closest replica, “Save” the image to the desktop.
4. At the end of the day, library staff will print the images and add them to the picture files collection.
ChatGPT Dream Interpretation Station
Tuesday: 10:00 am - 8:30 pm, open to anyone to participate, drop in anytime
Facilitated hours: 11:15 am - 12:15pm + 6-7pm
613 Sharp
This Description Was Written by ChatGPT. Are you curious about the secrets hidden within your dreams? Do you long to unravel the enigmatic messages your subconscious mind is sending you? Join us for a journey through the ethereal dream realm. At the ChatGPT Dream Interpretation Station, we believe that dreams hold the key to self-discovery and personal transformation. Our talented Dream Interpreters will use the power of the Crystal Ball to guide you through the profound and mysterious world of your dreams. The answers you seek are just a dream away.
Design a Ritual
Tuesday: 10:00 am - 8:30 pm, open to anyone to participate, drop in anytime
613 Sharp
A ritual is a sequence of activities involving gestures, words, actions, or revered objects. Rituals are a feature of all known human societies. They include not only the worship rites and sacraments of organized religions and cults, but also rites of passage, atonement and purification rites, oaths of allegiance, dedication ceremonies, coronations and presidential inaugurations, marriages, funerals and more.
Create a Ritual:
1. Choose an object from the Found in the Library Archive Box provided on the table.
2. Search the library catalog for 3 kinds of materials (picture file, book, magazine, dvd) related to the object chosen.
3. Retrieve these items.
4. Create and perform a ritual that incorporates all of these items.
5. Write this ritual for someone else to perform on a blank biblioderive deck provided on the table.
A Haunting in the Library
Tuesday: 4:00 pm - 5:00 pm, open to anyone to participate
6th floor Sharp
Nia Easley’s Research Studio I class is taking over an aisle dedicated to books about technology. Using props and costumes, they will set up a medium table by one end for SAIC students and faculty to receive a “reading”, and will be “haunting” the technology aisle with chants and interventions into those books.
Collected Intelligence
Tuesday: 4:00 pm - 6:00 pm, open to anyone to participate
6th floor Sharp
Claire Lobenfeld’s writing practice includes a lot of gathering—overheard language, words from a generator that they use to get unstuck. The process is gleaned from the cut-up method—cutting up copies of written texts to assemble a new text—which is itself an algorithmic form of writing. It creates new thinking generated from the authors of the source texts and the assembler. People will bring Claire sentences or pages from library books that she will document and “train” herself with the material as if she were an AI text generator to produce a new text.
Creature Roams
Tuesday: 5:00 pm - 6:00 pm
6th floor Sharp
Fallen pages of unread books accumulate into an assemblage, and the assemblage becomes a creature. The creature roams the library, curious and cautious. Performed by Sam Anthem.
Design a Ritual (Micronation Class)
Tuesday: 5:00 pm - 7:00 pm
6th floor Sharp
Jess Charlesworth’s Micronation’s class will be designing a ritual using object’s from their Alternative Survival kit plus materials from the Flaxman Library to create ‘dérive actions’. A ‘dérive action’ is a way of selecting something randomly, e.g. walking 20 places down the nearest aisle, turning around 3 times and reaching for the nearest book. A ritual is a sequence of activities involving gestures, words, actions, or revered objects used throughout human societies.
Soothsaying with the Flaxman Collection
Tuesday: 1:30 pm - 9:00 pm, drop in anytime. Facilitated hour 3-4pm
6th floor Sharp
Participants will pull cards from a tarot deck. Using the associated meanings of the cards, participants will find a book they are unfamiliar with using the Flaxman catalog. Participants will use this book to perform bibliomancy (a form of divination using books). Everyone will write down a question, flip to a random page/passage in the book, and try to interpret and derive an answer from the book in this way. Participants can share their interpretations and books with one another, and everyone’s question + tarot card + passage/page will be documented in a digital gallery. Stop by between 3 and 4pm to join a facilitated group session led by Clau Rocha.
Item Not Found at Any Member Institution
Tuesday: 9:00 am - 9:00 pm
6th floor Sharp
Margaret Dugger’s installation plays with the common conception of a book as a source of information by displaying the book in form only. What can you learn from a book that can’t be read? What can a book made from the scraps of many other books tell us? Handmade books scattered among the stacks within Flaxman Library are books that are unwieldy, unopenable, and maybe not books at all. They aim to surprise participants out of their assumptions as to what should be expected from a library and the experience of handling books
The Flaxman Library Bibliodérive Deck
Tuesday: 9:00 am - 9:00 pm, drop in anytime
6th floor Sharp
Choose a card from the Bibliodérive Deck and use the prompt to engage with the library’s collections, exploring non-traditional research and the physicality of the library itself. The Bibliodérive Deck of cards will be available to dérivists for use during the event. Prior to the bibliodérive, we are collecting prompts from the SAIC community. Please add your prompt to our deck using this link. The completed Deck will be archived in the library and will be shared online.