London Urban Space (so many hats)

Amulets at the Pitt Rivers

An amulet is "anything worn about the person as a charm or preventative against evil, mischief, disease, witchcraft, etc" (Oxford English Dictionary). For more of the 5000 amulets the Pitt Rivers Museum has archived go to the website Small Blessings.

Hornaday with Baby Bison at Smithsonian

"William Temple Hornaday, Chief Taxidermist of the United States National Museum from 1882, Curator of the Department of Living Animals, and the first Superintendent of the National Zoological Park, with a baby bison known as Sandy, probably on the grounds adjoining the Smithsonian Castle. This is probably the bison calf that Hornaday brought back from his 1886 summer field trip to Montana. The calf lived only a short time."

From The Smithsonian Archives

Moïse Apporte les Nouvelles Tables de la Loi: Google Books And The Ten Commandments

This image is from the google book Musée Religieux ou Choix des plus beaux tableaux inspirés par l'histoire sainte aux peintres les plus célèbres; first tome, published in 1836 by Hivert Libraire in Paris by "Etienne Achille Réveil, un ecclésiastiques du clergé de Paris".* The actual book is part of the Oxford University's history library collection.

Pursuing its mission to archive everything for everything to be accessible to everyone, in Google Books Google scanned library collections for printed knowledge to be preserved and made more available to more people and over more time. The resulting scans, the google books, generally look like books but simultaneously aren't simple visual reproductions of books either. And while the possible affects of this venture on knowledge are unsure, what is certain is that these digital formats are new vessels of knowledge; new mediums that necessarily carry new messages.

Sometimes these virtual books' new messages are very clear and this particular Musée Religieux google book is one such extraordinary example. As the scan above shows, the Google employee's hands covered with pink mini-finger condoms caught scanning chapter 52 reminds us of the mediation that occurs between the book and the google book (or even the physical labor that any medium necessitates to carry its idea). This meta-narration was created during the scanning/mediating gesture and is only present in the new platform. The original book from 1836 never intended to suggest such a notion, nor does the present-day copy in Oxford Library.

Even more amazingly these fingers were caught while scanning "Moïse Apporte les nouvelles tables de la loi" (Moses brings the new tablets of law). According to the first testament Moses spent 80 days and nights to get these tablets (and their message) to his people (the etching on the left side of the fingers represents Moses telling his people where to place the heavy tablets). He had to climb and descend the Mount Sinai, survive up there, wait for God to communicate and inscribe the principles in stone and all this twice, because after having gotten really upset at his brother's pagan ways he smashed the first two tablets. However all this activity is said to have resulted in the 10 commandments which set some the fundamental ethical principles of Judaism and Christianity.

Relative to Moses' approach, Google seems to have something slightly more efficient happening (although not tested on the long-run), but makes one wonder: are google books and the knowledge that they make available today's stone tablets and commandments? are Google employees today's prophets? And of course are those Moses' fingers?

* which more or less translates as Religious Museum or Choice of the most beautiful paintings inspired by the history of saints to the most celebrated painters, by Etienne Achille Réveil, an ecclesiastic from the clergy of Paris. For more of those fingers go to http://books.google.ca/books?id=pDwGAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&redir_esc=y#v=twopage&q&f=false

The Idea Behind Virtual Search Engines