Mixing Up The Library

Research project on interface politics which explores the implementation of Dj informational creative model for interacting with libraries and digital files.

Mixing Up The Library is Dan Norton’s research project joining creative practice with Information and Library Sciences. The research reviews the value and potential of the creative models to interact with information, collections and digital files. It emerges from the artist's interest in the relation from the reader to the writer mediated by technology (from the audience to the artist).

In the Information Sciences field many models have been developed to analyse the interaction between user - search system and information recovery. Models such as Ellis (1989), Ingwersen (1996), Saracevic (1996), and Belkin (1995) have made possible the development of informational systems matching the user's necessities. However, there is a gap among all of them: none has been developed from the observation of creative practice, hence, there are not any creative behaviors in information (Makri (2007) is an exception).

Disc Jockeys take back the means previous to authorship. The content is reused through their processes and this way is relatively easy to observe individual creative behaviors, allowing innovation and novelty coming into the process. These two behaviors are: to select and to mix. For example: the material choice, the sequence in what is shown and the way it is combined. This is enough to produce new information.

During the residency at the Hangar, the value and potential of DJ's information and creative model has been explored, and the value and potential of their informational and interactive creative model as well, through conversations and intrusions in the field of Information and Library Sciences.