The Seattle Central Library holds many works of art for the public to enjoy, both literary and pictorial. On a recent visit to the library one piece stuck out from the rest. The pieces of art was a sculpture titled "Babble Floor" by renowned artist Ann Hamilton.
The piece (pictured above) is a 7,200 square foot wooden Maple floor in the Evelyn W. Foster Learning Center on the fourth avenue level of the library. The floor is covered in over 550 lines of text from 11 different languages and alphabets and is made up of sentences from various pieces of literature. The floor consists of the languages Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Spanish and vietnamese. One unique element of the floor is that all of the writing is set in reverse, a play off of the unknown aspect of new languages and a reference to how books are made by the use of typesetting.
The letters on the floor are raised from the base and make for an extremely tactile experience. Hamilton claims to have done this for a number of reasons, most notably is the fact that she wanted anyone who walked on it to be able to experience the languages in some way or another. Even though most may not be able to read what the words are saying, they will most definitely be able to 'feel' what they are saying.
Hamilton did an exceptional job in creating a piece that was both aesthetically pleasing and thoughtful. I was genuinely engrossed by the floor and will have to take a visit back soon to get the full experience.
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