DEVIN HIGGINS

The Center for Black Music Research (CBMR) is a library and archive that works to preserve and promote black music in Africa and across the diaspora. The CBMR's considerable resources include sound recordsings, written scores, manuscripts and archival materials, photographs and videos, and a comprehensive collection of theses and dissertations.

Noticing, however, that the CBMR lacked any significant resources connected to house music, despite coverage of a wide range of other contemporary genres of music, I proposed an internship project to evaluate and update the CBMR's collections. House music is particularly relevant in Chicago, the site of the birthplace of the genre in the clubs of the 1980's, and of a world-renowned scene that flourishes to this day. Yet this vital piece of Chicago's recent history is often (perhaps even systematically) undervalued, and underrepresented institutionally. The CBMR house music collection stands to be a unique resource for fans and researchers alike.

Preliminary evaluations of the current collection have already uncovered several unique pieces of writing in the form of a thesis and dissertation that studied the Chicago house scene at a crucial time in the late 1980's and early 1990's, just before the house music scene achieved its widest coverage, and before its ramifications into mainstream rave culture. These texts explore house music, and the communities that surrounded it, with a depth, and level of seriousness, that seems to have been exceedingly rare at that point -- and as such provide a distinctive perspective on a burgeoning style of music at a critical point in time.

The purpose of my research project has been to explore the ways in which library design has been configured as a source of personal aesthetic inspiration for library patrons. In a colloquium held at Carnegie Mellon University, professor of art Lowry Burgess made the argument that the increasing “cyberization” of today’s library resources has led to the remaking of the library as a site of “direct social and sensory contact,” in which visitors can find a unique form of inspiration through direct engagement with the information environment ("Muses in the Library"). This idea of the library as source of inspiration can be traced back through history and connected to, for instance, the wunderkammer, or “cabinet of curiosities,” a space in which (strange or wonderful) objects were gathered together to promote the pleasure and wonder of visitors.

The library building may offer its own set of wonders, and the current trend of building libraries that are tourist attractions, and revitalizers of rundown quarters of the city, reinforces this notion. Libraries have become part of the “experience economy,” in which a strictly functionalist notion of the library, as purveyor of easy access, and pure convenience, has been updated by the emergence of “destination libraries,” such as the Remi Koolhaas-designed main branch of the Seattle Public system. In contrast to the inspiration conjured by the grandeur of some earlier “monumental” library edifices, these libraries inspire users by harnessing the promise of a unique, and human-level, experience within the library, and a direct engagement with its resources. The Bishan Library in Singapore, for example, was inspired by the look and feel of a tree house, with individual study nooks extending from the library and hanging out over the street, a design feature which promotes the idea of the library as home to secret, private places, and instills a spirit of play. Martin Aurund has done research on some practical ways to use the library’s “hidden secrets” as sources of inspiration for students^*.

My research will focus on these questions surrounding contemporary library buildings and their histories: What goals did their designs seek to achieve? How did these goals, or the finished libraries themselves, support or contradict the notion of a “library experience economy”? How do users and designers describe the aesthetic experience of the library, and to what motivations does it lead them? I will read contemporary theory on the topic, explore, and perhaps create, library case-studies based on research of particular buildings, and, when possible, include findings from my own personal visits to libraries among my results.

Further information will appear on this page when available. See my portfolio page for a report on Sweden's unique Malmö City Library.