Black diamond.

From Dust to Gold

The Royal Library

Copenhagen

November 11, 2006-December 31, 2009

As George W, Bush prepared to leave the While House this past January, the National Archives began to fret that its computer system might choke on massive amounts of data created by the outgoing administration. Estimated at nearly one hundred terabytes, the data was more than fifty times that generated during the Clinton administration. Now comes President Barack Obama, Blackberry addict and the man many would consider the first netizen-in-chief. His administration's digital output will no doubt swamp all who came before, creating new challenges for the archivists who must nimbly deal with new technologies, file formats, and storage challenges.

While strategies for preserving government data are developed and implemented, what about the digital documents that tell the stories of everyday lives of ordinary citizens? Ours is not the first era in which a burgeoning new technology created two levels of information, one of which was eventually all but lost to the other. The rise of mechanized printing in Europe from the 1500s to the 1700s created exceedingly beautiful volumes, most of which were preserved in churches and libraries. But it also saw a motley assortment of cheaply printed pamphlets, novels, handbooks, and other ephemera, most of which were considered without value and subsequently thrown out.

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These disposable documents of long ago are the focus of "From Dust to Gold," an exhibition of fascinating snippets of everyday life and thoughts of the era, as well as a provocation to carefully consider what cultural material is cherished versus what is truly valuable.

Former Oxford University librarian Falconer Madan's observation that "The dust of one age is the gold of another" gives us the exhibition's title, and the content spans the centuries from when printing technology was born to later eras of more refined publishing methods. Ranging from single sheets of text lacking any illustration to more elaborate feats of book arts, the works are organized by subject matter and provide a glimpse of the information people craved or needed. "Old News" presents the origins of the daily newspaper and features the oldest extant Danish news pamphlet, dating from 1542. Printed in Copenhagen, we learn "the true and terrible news" of a Silesian locust infestation "about such ... that nobody has ever seen before." It is a humble object, beautiful for its antiquated typeface but not necessarily a triumph of design. Compare that to a German medical volume from 1720 entitled "Know Yourself" (part of the exhibition's "The World Within" section) whose structure includes several folds, windows, and flaps that allow the reader to investigate human anatomy. Even centuries ago, the gulf between the world of mass-market publishing and more ambitious book arts was readily apparent.

"The Art of Dying" section is the most fascinating, featuring books whose specific intent was to enlighten readers about preparing for the great beyond. Revealed through a variety of publications are the shifting attitudes toward death from the late Middle Ages through the eighteenth century. While the Protestant Reformation Era provided books on how to avoid the devil's enticements at the moment of death, subsequent works from the 1600s stressed preparing to die as a lifelong project requiring daily reflection. By the 1 700s we begin to see less obsession with the end of life and more focus on how to get the most out of life through sleep, food, good hygiene, and exercise. Leaning in for a closer look at the finely detailed woodcuts of chortling skeletons doing their dance of death, one pauses to consider the role of books and publishing in stoking or calming the fears of that or any other age.

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Installed in the Royal Library's recently opened Montana Hall, the exhibition's layout is a peculiar combination of intimacy and distance. Designed by artist Peter Holst Henckel, a circular glass case in the center of the room holds most of the exhibition and invites the visitor to move around its edge. The dim lights and dark walls provide an almost cozy feel, but the dominating size of the center chamber make the books feel quite far away. The room's stony silence is interrupted by noise from digital components of the display which, given the antiquity of the exhibited materials, feel like awkward attempts to contemporize the display. A touch screen where visitors could virtually turn the pages of old books offers a nice attempt at interactivity; however, the repetitive, canned "sound of a page turning" (that played even while no one was using the kiosk: was ultimately a contemplation breaker.

Our everyday lives are becoming fused with more and more digital technology. Our reliance on it is heavy, just as the peoples of Europe relied on the technology of the printing press in the era represented by the artifacts of "From Dust to Gold." The show is nourishment for the lover of books--the designer, the typophile, and the historian. Beyond a simple show and tell, it is a quiet call to realization: we live now--as they did then--in a time when a new media is changing the ways we communicate and thus the ways we live. We must strive to record and preserve it as best we can.

LUKE STROSNIDER is an artist and writer currently based in Rochester, New York. For more of his words, images, and projects, visit www.lukestronider.com.