RENEWABLE SOURCES

Alterlibrary gathers collections of Renewable Sources of Imagination.

Unlike traditional libraries of completed, individual works, Alterlibrary hosts visual and written sources abstracted from varied contexts. These sources are introduced into an environment which triggers imagination and invites to think with and possibly recreate the thoughts expressed in the sources.

Each source is designed to be modified, connected, and recomposed, encouraging readers to become co-creators within this evolving library.

What are renewable sources? 

Each inventive, imaginative, or reflective process renews existing sources within an interconnected and collaborative ecosystem of influences, relations, and alterations. 

As we invent, imagine, or even think, we adopt protocols, tools, and languages inherited from others—elements already touched, shaped, and shared by many. We react to them and possibly renew them.

Renewable sources have thus a “social” dimension. Sources pass from hand to hand, from brain to brain, from mouth to ear, from ear to mouth, from paper to eye, from eye to brain, and in this transit they evolve, crossing centuries and migrating from East to West, from South to North, and vice versa.

Not only physical materials but also knowledge and imagination itself are renewable! Alterlibrary makes the inherently renewable, inexhaustible and social nature of thought and imagination visible.

Start exploring Alterlibrary’s collections of Renewable Images and Renewable Thoughts.