Phillip Heckman’s On Ouisconsin Exhibit

[jesse_the_k]

The artist has repurposed a lovely oak card catalog as a Wisconsin-themed cabinet of curiosities. It’s furnished with ridiculously slant facts and amusing artefacts.

Open library catalog card drawer reveals a rectangular model with a laminated card in front. A dairy barn is evoked by erector-set girders covered in clear plastic. Inside are six plastic cows feeding at a hay trough. A single chocolate chip appears behind cows 1, 2, 4, and 6.

the card reads

Artifact: Ouisconsin farmers pioneered many animal husbandry techniques, such as computing dairy waste output by means of barnary notation. For example, value displayed (110101) equals 53 in base 10. Either way, it's a mucking large number.

Phillip Heckman’s project site

Sadly, he states he won’t be making this wonder available through the web. I would be happy to offer tea and GF cookies to you if you’d like to see it in person at my local branch library before 31 July 2019.

Another sample drawer appears in the the local free weekly article on the exhibit

Comments

[isis]

Hee, that's adorable!

[raino]

in my local library is also art made in library card catalog cabinet! My father researched a bit about the history of library catalog cards when he was younger, and they are fascinating. Keeping big libraries useful and the records up to date at all has been the biggest issue until a practical filing system was invented. Playing cards were used at some point, since they were uniform in size and readily available...