The Ice Archive

These drawings are about the crystallisation of water to create an Archive for things which may be lost in the future.

The archival information is embedded and released through phase change.

The site is the Regents Canal, a fluid pathway along which the crystals form a gradual accretion through their growth and self assembly.

The Archive can store personal memories, which can take the form of smells, images, sounds.

There is a 'Reading Room', analogous to Haruki Murakami's library in the 'End of the World' (Hard Boiled Wonderland), a personal space where there is enacted the future release of information through phase change.

The crystals are a synthetic molecular construction, similar to Vonnegut's 'Ice-Nine', an ice which is stable at room temperature, with a high melting point.

Conversation with Anna Boyer, Librarian.

1. A Book Graph

2. Public libraries vs Archives

3. Categorisation

4. What will we need to collect that may disappear?

5. The future architecture of Libraries: Futurists vs Architects.

1. Book Graph - Value against Time

This graph shows how the perceived value of a book changes over time, from the point of view of a Library and an Archive.

A book is first published - the origin point on the time line. It has a high value for the library, it's new and it attracts users. The value then declines over time as it's newness wears off, and quantity of the book increases. The curve can bottom out and turn upwards over time, as copies of the book become scarce and book attains a collectors or archival value. At the low point on the curve, the public library may need to make the decision whether to retain or discard the book. The decision may depend on the libraries need to attract users with newly releases, or pressure on shelving space, weighed up against the predicted value of the book for the library in the future. For example a book may be retained as it has particular history about the local community.

2. Public Libraries operate at the beginning of the time line, Archives tend to operate towards the end of the time line when the book has become scarce and collectable.

Important to archivists is the provenance of the information - where it came from - and how it makes connections to other archives. Archivists draw parallels from one collection to another.

3. Thus categorisation of archive material is multilayered to enable these connections to be found. Archival categorisation is able to locate specific information within a larger document, for example a statement minuted and transcribed on a particular date, by a particular committee, within a certain council.... as opposed to Library categorisation for a book, where a book is more of a stand alone item, identified by author, subject, and keyword.

4. The Berlin Library is both a public library and a repository. These two co-existing states are therefore concerned with the acquisition of the New and of Everything, and hoarding and collecting Everything. The Library / Repository needs to ask the question, what will we need to collect for the future?

Formatting of information, ie music, is a challenge for the two states of the Library / Repository, as the format of information is constantly outdated. To access the information the user needs technology which may be obsolete, or the information needs to be reformatted. Reformatting each time the technology shifts is expensive and there is a change in quality of the information. For example, the original format of some of the music collection is on vinyl. Digitalisation makes them more accessible and proofs against deterioration, yet there is a loss in quality of sound. By preserving the original format the library is also preserving a quality and depth of sound from the past, that the future may not have access to.

How would a library preserve smells which may disappear - artic air, fresh air, the smell of a forest which disappears, a plant which disappears?

5. What is the future architecture of the library? In the 1990s the phenomena of monumental libraries paralleled the rise of digitalisation of information, a seeming contradiction as digitalisation means millions of books can be contained in hundreds of CDs, accessed from anyplace.

What is the significance of the library in the future, does it exist as a civic institution, or an archival storage space for digital information?

The Old Operating Theatre

In the eaves of St Thomas's church in Southwark, is hidden an old operating theatre and herb garret.

This building can be read as a series of internal mutations over the centuries. Originally a church as part of St Thomas's Hospital (which may have been founded in 1173), the church was rebuilt between 1698 and 1701 with the separate roof space used as a herb garrett to store and cure herbs. One end of the garret was converted into an operating theatre circa 1822, and currently the church itself contains offices.

The operating theatre has semi-concentric rings of standing platforms from which young medical students could observe the operations. There is a large skylight above the lonely operating table in centre of the room, which lends a strange sacrificial aspect to this macabre theatre.

The void beneath the theatre floorboards is packed with 3 inches of sawdust to prevent blood leaking into the church below. The building itself is a repository for information on the Victorian English patients, information embedded in the DNA beneath its floorboards.