Babel
_Simon Biggs
about Simon Biggs
Simon Biggs, a visual and inter-disciplinary artist, he uses the computer and interactive systems within large-scale installation, web-based artworks and other contexts to explore issues around identity and reality as social constructs.
His work has been shown internationally, including Tate Modern, South
London Gallery, South Bank Centre, New British Library, Whitechapel Gallery
and Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; Tate Gallery and FACT Liverpool;
Mappin Gallery and Site Gallery, Sheffield; Cornerhouse, Manchester; Ikon
Gallery, Birmingham; Kettles Yard Gallery, Cambridge; Harris Museum, Preston;
Maclellan Gallery and Collins Gallery, Glasgow; Centre de Georges Pompidou,
Paris; Academy de Kunste and Kulturforum, Berlin; Rijksmuseum Twenthe,
Holland; Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw; Musea Mimara, Zagreb; Macau
Arts Museum; Cameraworks, San Francisco; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis;
Paco des Artes, University of Sao Paulo; McDougall Art Gallery, Christchurch;
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Centre for Contemporary Photography,
Melbourne, Curtin University Gallery, Perth and the Experimental Art Foundation,
Adelaide.
He is currently Professor at Edinburgh College of Art, UK.
Simon Biggs http://www.littlepig.org.uk/
About Babel_Artist's Statement
_Simon Biggs / May 2001
Babel is a site specific work for a non-site. The context of the work is non-physical. The site is an abstract thing...information space and the taxonomy of knowledge that all libraries represent...which the Internet, where the project is realized, is.
The Dewey Decimal numbering system, used in the cataloguing of library contents, is the key metaphor, visualized in a three dimensional multi-user space that is itself a metaphor for the infinite nature of information.
In Babel the Dewey Decimal system is used as a mapping and navigation technique. The structure of the library is re-mapped into the hyper-spatial that constitutes the Web. The Dewey numbering system is employed as a means to navigate the internet itself, the taxonomy inherent in the numerical codes mapping onto web-sites that conform with the defined subjects.
The Dewey Decimal system is based on two concepts; firstly that each area of knowledge can be defined as a number and that the space between each numbered area is infinitely divisible. This allows the cataloguing system to be both navigable in its subject headings whilst able to contain an infinite number of potential entries in the catalogue. As such it is a simultaneously finite macrocosmic and infinite microcosmic system.
In Babel viewers logged onto the site are confronted with a 3D visualization of an abstract data space mapped as arrays and grids of Dewey Decimal numbers. As they move the mouse around the screen they are able to navigate this 3D environment. All the viewers are able to see what all the other viewers, who are simultaneously logged onto the site, are seeing. The multiple 3D views of the data-space are montaged together into a single shared image, where the actions of any one viewer effects what all the other viewers see. If a large number of viewers are logged on together the information displayed becomes so complex and dense that it breaks down into a meaningless abstract space.
Viewers are able to generate specific Dewey Decimal numbers, a dynamic interface keeping them informed of web-site addresses that conform to the subjects thus defined. Viewers can select any site with a simple point and click of the mouse, opening the site in a new window.
Babel http://hosted.simonbiggs.easynet.co.uk/babel
Commissioned by Focal Point Gallery
Supported by Southend on Sea Borough Libraries, Essex Libraries,
Suffolk Libraries & Consortium Hosting
Funded by East England Arts and the Arts Council of England New
Audiences Fund
Reverse Engineering the Library_Babel,
Simon Biggs
by Steve Dietz