Catalogue

There is an interesting issue of the catalogue for the library. How would you summarize which book you are referring to? Is a title enough? What would the title of the book be? One starts to run into difficulty because every possible book is in this library. Since titles are generally at most a couple of lines long, you'll end with many of the books with the same title. In fact is there a way to uniquely identify books in this library? Beyond reproducing the whole text, probably not. Some books you will be able to write a short programme which will reproduce the whole text. For example the book with MCV repeated continuously has a short programme which can be used to reconstruct the book: just keep repeating MCV.

This gets into interesting issues of measures of randomness and complexity. There are ways to measure randomness by looking at the shortest programme that can reproduce the sequence. I wrote an article on issues related to this and Memory in the recent issue of Drawbridge. It raises the question of which books do you pick out as having meaning and which are just random nonsense. The issue of music and noise obviously relate to this. But equally which mathematical proofs do we mark out as special and worthy of note and which are boring and tautological? There is a aesthetic judgement being made in the choice of mathematical pathways. I could get a computer to churn out theorems for me but which are worthy of me sending off to be published? The monkey and the mathematical typewriter.

Here is a link to the Infinite Monkey Theorem

Sketch plan of 19th step performance

In response to Dorothy some thoughts on to how the 19th step performance could look???.
I was inspired by the performance at the ICA Ear cinema to have the audience standing at the center of everything. In a way it makes the audience a kind of Aleph.
Also been reading The Theater and its Double by Antonin Artuad The Theater of Cruelty (First Manifesto)1958.
Thought it would be interesting to mark out with tape the torus and hexagon. Part of the hexagon floor area could be painted on with blackboard paint so Marcus could chalk on the floor (was imagining making a really long chalk holder so it could be done from standing) and dancers remove/scuff marks with their moves.
Imagined vast pile of paper (thinking of the idea of all the potential books that could be written) that could be written on that could then be hung on the opposite side of hexagon. Was thinking about Dorothys comments of the sound of paper when moved.
Marcus could be followed by a spotlight changing shape from square to circle etc. I was imagining a series of freestanding mirrors on wheels thinking of Carols post about Anne Hamiltons performance piece and the role of the mirror in the library "I prefer to dream that the polished surfaces feign and promise infinity....)that and on the opposite side I was imagining 3 pieces of gym equipment that are all about extending energy but going nowhere, all to be viewed in the mirror that detaches us from reality. I was imagining they could be used during the performance thinking about repeation and control too.
Wasn't sure where the musicians should go, thought maybe infront of screen that could be back and/or front projected.
At either ends of the hexagon, would be screens some thoughts on content ...would be great to use the software Seadragon and Photosynth demonstrated in the movie clip I posted recently. Also thinking about imagery linking patterns to control our bodies and natural movement eg tango, wrestling, football etc.. also the avatar of Marcus engaged in a Secondlife parrallel universe?
This are all just intitial ideas feel free to comment, alter etc thanks