Scanned Library

The installation »Scanned Library« consists of a cut up and reassembled book shelf in front of a wallpaper of photos, row upon row of the same shelf but with its position shifted. The work belongs to the series »Scanned Objects«, which Peter Weibel developed as of 1990. Here objects are cut into strips, which are separated by Plexiglas discs – turned against each other and shifted –and reassembled in order to translate the electronic resolution of images into lines, so-calledscan lines, into a material level. The medial technique, the generation of a TV image by scan lines, is transferred back into reality. This is only possible because reality already offered the option of scan lines.

In the age of the Internet, a new space is emerging in which material books and libraries are no longer the sole carriers and repositories of textual information. Years before the extensive digitization of knowledge stored in books, Weibel’s work points to the transition from the location-bound library to the immaterial and seemingly locationless digital information space.