What Is A Book? How Do We Learn?

 

This sculpture has two components both of which address the idea of the book as an object, the process of learning and teaching students to think.

The first component is the formal structure of this installation that starts with a large maple bookcase measuring 4 feet high by 12 feet wide and 15 inches deep, hanging on the wall of the school’s main lobby.

This bookcase is filled on the top shelf with hand made, hand painted sculptures in the shape of books, slabs of wood painted in bright colors, inspired by the flags of a multicultural student population.

On the bottom shelf there are seventy two white slabs of wood all in a row with their spines marked in black dots and dashes.  They look like the keys on some crazy piano, or a musical score or some kind of code.

It is Morse Code to be precise, presented as pure pattern derived from a special language, spelling out information about the man whose name the school bears:

DR. LOUIS BENNETT BISHOP 1865-1950 PHYSICIAN ORNITHOLOGIST AND AUTHOR.

As part of the piece there will be two long distance video cameras focused on the Bishop Woods Memorial Bird Sanctuary, alert to the natural things living right next to the school, and posting those sighting on two TV screens positioned amongst the sculptures.  Both the sculptures and the video images are in color and black and white and both are silently asserting their presence.

Materials: Polychrome wood, Surveillance monitors, Video cameras

Dimensions: 48” x 144” x 15”

Date: 2007

Proposal