Talmud Project, New York, NY, 1999

The Talmud Project, exhibited at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum's first National Design Triennial, explores the simultaneous display of multiple related texts. Several dials allow the reader to trace ideas from one text to another, examine translations and find text in the larger context of the full corpus.

From the New York Times,
March 10, 2000:

"David Small's Talmud Project is a work of genius. A prototype for an interactive book, produced at the MIT Media Lab, the project may be the Triennial's most powerful piece of architecture. Combining passages from the Torah and the Talmud, in English and French translations, the software enables viewers to manipulate blocks of text into the walls, streets and windows in an imaginary city of words..."

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Stream of Consciousness, Monaco; Japan; Los Angles; Linz; Taiwan, 1999

Water briskly flows down a series of cascades into a glowing pool. Projected on the surface of the pool and flowing as if they were caught in the water's grasp are a tangle of words. You can reach out and touch the flow, blocking it or stirring up the words causing them to grow and divide, morphing into new words that are pulled into the drain and pumped back to the head of the stream to tumble down again. This work has been exhibited in Monaco, Japan, L.A., Linz and most recently, Taiwan.

Project Details