“interPLAY: between creativity & information” is the intriguing title of a one-day symposium at York University that is dedicated to exploring and challenging definitions of “information” from a diversity of perspectives.
Hosted by the York University Libraries, interPLAY will take place Monday, March 26, from 9am to 7pm, in the Senate Chamber, 940 South Ross Building, and the Scott Library on the Keele campus.
The symposium is informed by the ongoing publication of the IB&raisonnE, an experimental online catalogue raisonné (or complete list) currently being developed at the York University Libraries by Adam Lauder (left), the University’s inaugural W.P. Scott Chair for Research in e-Librarianship.
Lauder is working to develop the catalogue raisonné with Canadian Conceptual artist IAIN BAXTER& (the artist recently added the ampersand to his name), and an international team of collaborators. The development of the catalogue offers an ideal opportunity to respond to the visionary information art of IAIN BAXTER& with fresh approaches to information, information technology, and library and information science from across the disciplinary spectrum.
Inspired by Canadian scholar and philosopher Marshall McLuhan’s transformation of information theory, from a “matching” model of communication to one of active “making”, IAIN BAXTER& began in 1966 to explore the creative possibilities of “information” as a medium. The 45-year process of exploration that followed has led the conceptual artist to engage with, and creatively reinterpret, information concepts across a range of disciplines, inclu
ding business, computing, and linguistics.
Marshall McLuhan
University of British Columbia English Professor Richard Cavell, author of McLuhan in Space: A Cultural Geography (University of Toronto Press, 2003) will present the symposium’s keynote address. Cavell’s book was the first to propose that Marshall McLuhan be read as a spatial theorist.
To learn more about other presenters and symposium proceedings and to register, visit the interPLAY website.
More about Adam Lauder
Lauder has joined the Libraries for a two-year term as the first W.P. Scott Chair for Research in e-Librarianship. He holds a master in information studies from the University of Toronto and a masters in art history from Concordia University.
His research project encompasses many areas of e-librarianship including critical information studies, digital archives, scholarly communication and metadata standards. Lauder is applying the catalogue raisonné publication model in an online environment, with a focus on IAIN BAXTER&.