Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
So what you see behind me is the start of 'Book Hive'; 400 books celebrating 400 years
of Bristol libraries. 'Book Hive' is a piece of robotic art. It
is a living sculpture and the books actually respond to people that come and visit the
library. There is a series of sensors and as people move past it and interact with it
the books come alive and move back. It is a way of celebrating people's physical presence
in the space and the physical book, and a way for the books to play in the digital realm
as well. There is a lot of questions being asked right
now in public libraries; will they survive the next hundred years? What value does a
physical book have? When was the last time people visited a library? So we wanted to
create something that represented what a library would be if it was actually a living creature
and we came up with this idea, or this analogy, of a hive. No one person can ever read all
the books in a library, in the same way a bee from a hive can't ever understand what
a full hive does - so we thought the books are like a bee hive, so we came up with this
idea of a 'Book Hive'. A number of years ago there was a project
called 'Heart Robot' and that brought together designers, engineers and artists and the project
was so successful that we then started a company called Rusty Squid. We are based down in Spike
Island, part of the Puppet Place Project, and over the last three years we have done
about 12 projects and it's been a combination of UWE staff, UWE undergrads and UWE graduates
coming together, both engineers, artists and designers to create the type of work that
can only be created when those three worlds collide.
'Book Hive' will be complete in its entirety on the 13th of February and will be here until
March the 7th. So come down explore, have a look and interact and play.