Filament Mind

Title: Filament Mind

Artist: Brian W. Brush & Yong Ju Lee

Date: 2013-2021

Medium: Fiber optic cables, LED lights, Illuminators

Location: Teton County Library

Funding by: Teton County Library Foundation

Libraries ignite a flurry of thoughts; as soon as visitors step inside, they begin asking questions and searching for answers. An artist team set out to manifest this intellectual activity at Teton County Library through a dynamic, interactive, digital and spatial sculpture.

“The artwork will be intellectually challenging (like a good book),” Brian Brush and Yong Ju Lee wrote in their final proposal. “The artwork will communicate that you have arrived at a place where you can access the world. It will inspire you to achieve your endless personal potential. It will communicate openness, understanding and compassion for others and to new ways of thinking through the act of acquiring knowledge.”

Installed in January 2013 and decommissioned in 2021, the sculpture contained nearly 1,000 thread-like filaments cascade from a mainframe column. Transcending its technological sophistication, the sculpture had a life-like aesthetic, at times resembling a bird in flight, a waterfall, a mountain, a crater, even the willows that whistle around the valley. Each filament flowed from the column to the wall and an anchor point tagged by a Dewey Decimal System section title.

When a visitor began a search on WyldCat – the online inventory of the library organized by the Dewey Decimal System – a LED light would glow on the filament corresponding with that Dewey Decimal section title – say “International Relations” – and related topics glow as well – like “Political Science.”

Filament Mind was designed to be the visual brain of the library and by extension, the community.

Images above by David Agnello