What Borges Said About Babel

International Computer Music Conference
Kino Šiška
Ljubljana, Slovenia
September 2012

It will have been announced – some weeks prior to the performance – that What Borges Said About Babel is to be presented at such-and-such a time, on such-and-such a date. The announcement invites people to contribute to the performance by posting audio-visual clips to Facebook. The clips' cumulative audio – more pile-up than mash-up – is amplified in the hall. As Borges observes, the rule of the universe is not ‘sense’ "and ‘rationality’ (even humble, pure coherence) is an almost miraculous exception." The duration of the performance is the same as the duration of a relaxed reading of Borges' “The Library of Babel”: eleven minutes and thirty-eight seconds.