In Search of the Pale Blue Spin

In Search of the Pale Blue Spin is a 20-minute audio story and walk in collaboration with writer Jennifer Metsker. The downloadable audio leads visitors through the aisles and stacks of the Hatcher Library starting at its north entrance.

 

We took inspiration from the Jorge Luis Borges' story Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius in which a narrator becomes obsessed with the fictional world of Tlön after stumbling across an unusual encyclopedia entry. On Tlön, nouns, like books, do not exist. On Tlön, there is no time, so there is no history. Objects appear merely through hope.

 

On this audio tour you become Tlönian. 

 

You are looking for a book.

You saw it once,

and then it was gone.

But perhaps it is here,

somewhere in the hushed spaces

of the library

that you have called into being.