An immersive VR installation titled “The Infinite Library” has begun at the Drik Studio premise, located in house 16, Sukrabad, Panthapath, Dhaka. Goethe-Institut Bangladesh, in partnership with The Tech Academy (TTA) jointly organising this exceptional VR installation.
Dr Kirsten Hackenbroch, Director of Goethe-Institut Bangladesh, in her welcoming speech said, “The Infinite Library uses an immersive VR to explore the past, present and future of knowledge, broadening our ideas of ‘libraries’. The Tech Academy with their approach of gamified education and a team of tech savvy and creative volunteers are a wonderful partner to bring this globally travelling project to Bangladesh.”
Thanking Goethe-Institut Bangladesh for the collaboration, Founder and CEO of Tech Academy, Shams Jaber said that Virtual Reality is one of the technologies with the highest projected potential for growth and this event aims at showing our youth what libraries in the future may look like with the advent of VR. He's excited about the impact this event will have on the mind of the participants in how they imagine their future.
Expressing his optimism, creative director of The Infinite Library and a multimedia artist by profession Mika Johnson said, that The Infinite Library is an example of how we can use new technologies, such as virtual reality, to share stories in ways that transport us to different places or times, through simulations that allow us to touch and interact with various knowledge systems.”
Inaugurating the VR event, filmmaker and freelance media & communications professional Dina Hossain said “The virtual library exhibition shows us the possibilities of new ways of exploring knowledge, learning through experience and game playing. The Tech Academy is a perfect partner for the exhibition as it has been exploring ways of making learning fun since it was founded. When children learn by problem solving, without fear of failing that new innovations can happen.”
The installation will remain open for visitors until September 14, every day from 3 pm to 8 pm.
The Infinite Library is not brimming with books. Nor is it a building. Nor is it reminiscent of anything that reminds one of a traditional library. It is an experience that takes place inside a virtual cave, with access to small chambers that double as portals, or micro worlds, that allow you to travel in time. Beneath the cave flows a subterranean river that connects all the chambers, like the nodes of rhizome roots that branch out horizontally, all deep within the womb of the Earth. Each node in turn has its own centre or seed, which is ready to grow to the surface via a sinkhole, should you activate the knowledge within. The unity of these systems of knowledge, along with culture and nature, is at the core of this project. It is the library’s guiding metaphor. From the star to the stone, there is no above or below in The Infinite Library. There is only knowledge in each corner where we seek to discover and understand it.
The Infinite Library is a traveling installation produced by the Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan New Delhi that reimagines the future of libraries as interactive spaces that engage visitors through multisensory forms of storytelling. It seeks to embed human stories within a much grander narrative, one which includes the birth of our planet and the evolution of all life forms.
The ‘Library’ part of the installation is conceived as a living organism, a kind of embodiment of knowledge that introduces itself to visitors personally before inviting them to explore its house. This includes a QR code game, holograms, 3D-printed objects, audio-visual works, and the project’s central piece: a vast VR library set in a cave. The project is an immersive storytelling experience that visualizes different cultural backgrounds across past, present, and future, expanding the concept of the library into a cross-cultural concept of knowledge transfer through VR rooms.
Within this virtual space, The Infinite Library hosts smaller sub-libraries, all of which are connected by nature. Each VR room introduces one knowledge system dedicated to South Indian Puppetry, European Alchemy, and Polynesian Navigation from around the world.
