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Utopia: From Eden to the Internet
From: The New York Public Library
| By:
Holland Goss |
 he Garden of Eden might appear to be more of a utopian location than an Internet chat room. An exhibition on utopias, held at The New York Pubic Library (NYPL), however, illuminated the quest for utopias throughout human history and encouraged contemplation of utopian thought in modern life. |
"Utopian thinking has been a necessary and vital part of human experience as far back as we know," says Holland Goss, research curator at the NYPL. Exploring this idea, The New York Public Library along with the Bibliothèque nationale de France developed Utopia: The Search for the Ideal Society in the Western World, an exhibition held at the Humanities and Social Sciences Library from October 2000 to January 2001. The exhibition shed light on a variety of utopian creations and experiments, from the Garden of Eden to kibbutzim, from Thomas More's Utopia to '60s psychedelic rock bands. |
The exhibition's creators, in an effort to both complement the physical exhibition and to recognize the utopian potential of the Internet, developed a companion website for Utopia. The site (http://www.nypl.org/utopia/) provides an overview of the four main sections of the physical exhibition, Sources, Other Worlds, Utopia in History and Dreams and Nightmares. The site's selected texts and images include a depiction of the Garden of Eden from a medieval book of hours, Thomas More's first edition of Utopia, Thomas Jefferson's handwritten copy of the Declaration of Independence and a Nazi propaganda poster blaming the Jews for inventing Marxism. |
In Metaworlds, available only online, site designers took advantage of Thomas More's clever pun on the Greek roots of utopia, which means both "good place" and "no place." Metaworlds looks at how (or even if) the Internet, which exists in no place, is expanding our notion of utopia. Users can participate in an interactive poll designed to encourage thinking about the Internet as a possible location for utopian experimentation. They can also read opinions from leading utopian and Internet scholars posted on the site. |
"What's interesting about the poll results is that if you outright ask people whether or not the Internet is a place where a utopian community can be created, most people were inclined to say no," according to Meg Maher, assistant research coordinator for NYPL exhibitions. " But when asked about specific aspects of that same question, people answered in the affirmative." For example, one's ability to remake one's identity is a key component to a utopian construct. When asked if people used alternate identities online, over half the respondents said that they occasionally did. However, many respondents did not think of the Internet as a possible location for a utopia. "Maybe people who don't classify their actions as utopian never thought in those terms before," says Maher. "They never thought that what they are doing in a chat room is a deeper, more philosophical undertaking." The physical exhibition and the website were designed to encourage such contemplation. The website provides extensive lists of related websites, bibliographies and suggested reading. |
The website creators faced the challenge of providing an experience to users comparable, or at least complementary to, the experience of walking through a physical exhibition of over 500 objects collected from around the world. The site makes a conscious effort to provide a taste of the physical exhibition, without attempting to recreate it. Using interactive designs and activities, the site exemplifies the use of the World Wide Web as a unique exhibition space. Creators of the website exhibition grappled with similar questions to those faced in the creation of the physical exhibition: how should the material be structured and grouped, how might visitors experience the material, and how much and what kind of information should be provided with each object and topic? |
Of course, as Goss notes, there are some ways that "a brick and mortar exhibition will always surpass a Web exhibition." The experience of physically standing in front of Thomas Jefferson's handwritten copy of the Declaration of Independence cannot be replicated. Maher adds, "you just can't get the same mind-blowing, awe-inspiring feeling from looking at something on the Web. But, there are a lot of things you can do on the Web that you can't do in galleries." Both spaces can be appreciated in different ways. |
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