Untitled (Capilano Schema) by Sergio Serrano and Alexander Stewart. Photo by provided by the artists. 

“Libraries are a radical concept,” say Edmonton artists Sergio Serrano and Alexander Stewart. Caught during the final stages of fabrication for their artwork for Capilano Library, the duo dove into a spirited discussion of their project, Untitled (Capilano Schema), which connects people, data, technology, and visual art to tell a nuanced story of the Capilano community. The piece is being installed over the coming weeks, suspending abstract objects sourced from the communities surrounding the library, in the facility’s community room and common area.

“This idea of libraries as radical comes from the current global conversation about access to information and democratized tools,” says Alexander Stewart. “Libraries are also going through a technological shift, becoming maker spaces. So, anyone can go in and access any type of information or tool.”

Capilano community members were invited to bring valued objects to workshops facilitated by the artists who collected data about each item. In keeping with the maker space concept, the artists then worked with participants to create 3D scans of their object using readily available technology.

In the end, Serrano & Stewart scanned about 200 objects or pieces of data. That number shrank to +/- 14 as they worked to determine which pieces would be most representative of themes, and which would become part of the final artwork. To map connections and stories, the artists organized the words of the community into spreadsheets, then fed them through a Markov machine learning system, which presented the data back in a new form. The artists then used that data to create an image map connecting the objects through commonalities of theme, materiality, sentiment, and story.

“There’s the commonality of people going to Disneyland or even the Bahamas and bringing home a souvenir,” explains Stewart. “That became representative of a time and place, a set of values linked with connection to family as well as geography.”

“We also tried to balance the different ways people represent sentiment,” continues Serrano. “You have mass-produced objects that are deeply sentimental to the owner alongside unique objects that were knitted by hand or made by a child in an art class. We found exciting connections and contrasts in the data we pulled out to resolve the final set of objects.”

Working representationally meant that the artists weren't concerned with creating minutely accurate models of the objects.

Serrano and Stewart with the model of a community member’s cowboy hat. Photo by EAC. 

“The cowboy hat is interesting because it represents a specific object story from the library itself,” continues Stewart. “Essentially the Library became a person with a story. There’s a patron who is there every day and is quite a tall man who always wears a cowboy hat, so you can see him as he walks through the stacks with this hat that bobs over the books. One of the librarians was talking about the project and told him he had to participate. He said he didn’t know what to bring so they said, ‘You should just scan your hat!’ The object is iconic, but also very specific.”

(Artists Sergio Serrano [left] and Alexander Stewart [right] with one of the sculptures for their Capilano Library public artwork)

Libraries are radical, say Edmonton artists Sergio Serrano and Alexander Stewart. Caught during the final stages of fabrication for their as-yet-untitled artwork for Capilano Library, the duo dove into a spirited discussion of their project, which connects people, data, technology, and visual art to tell a nuanced story of the Capilano community. The piece will be installed over the coming weeks, suspending more than 10 abstract objects, sourced from the neighbourhoods surrounding the library, in the facility’s community room and common area.

“That radical idea comes from the current global conversation about access to information and democratized tools,” says Stewart, “Libraries are also going through a technological shift becoming maker spaces. So, anyone can go in and access any type of information or tool. We wanted to talk about the Capilano community within that context, and that conversation has driven the process all the way through”.

(A selection of the sculptures that will be part of the Capilano Library public art installation)

Capilano community members were invited to bring valued objects to workshops facilitated by the artists who collected data about each item. In keeping with the maker space concept, the artists then worked with participants to create 3D scans of their object using readily available technology such as freeware and cellphone apps. “As artists working with the community, we didn’t want to access any tools that would be beyond the means of anyone living there,” says Serrano. “That’s why we used apps that people could get on their phone. The idea is that when you see the artwork, you can think that this is something you can do yourself, and we’ll share all the information we’ve gathered as a way of giving back to the community.”

In the end, Serrano and Stewart scanned about 200 objects or pieces of data. That number shrank to +/- 14 as they worked to determine which pieces would be most representative of themes, and which would become part of the final artwork. To map connections and stories, the artists organized the images and metadata into spreadsheets, then fed them through a Markov machine learning system, (https://towardsdatascience.com/introduction-to-markov-chains-50da3645a50d) which created an image map connecting the objects through commonalities of theme, materiality, sentiment, and story.

(One of the image maps generated by the artists of objects brought to the Capilano Library public art workshops - courtesy of of the artists)

The process allowed the artists to extrapolate feelings of value from specific items like religious symbols, and find the sentimental undercurrents that linked them with less specific objects evoking the same themes. “There’s the commonality of people going to Disneyland or even the Bahamas and bringing home a souvenir,” explains Stewart. “That became representative of a time and place, a set of values linked with connection to family as well as geography”.

(This china figurine represents a myriad of emotions, beliefs and memories)

“We also tried to balance the different ways people represent sentiment,” continues Serrano. “There’s the commercial industrial angle – an object has deep meaning for the person who brought it in, but there are also thousands of clones around the world because the object came off a conveyor belt. You also have things that are knitted by hand or made by a child in an art class. We also looked at concepts that are very ancient like the geometry of a seashell and the development of eons of slow change. We found exciting connections and contrasts in the data we pulled out to resolve the final set of objects.”

(A fidget spinner will be part of the final artwork)

Two of the objects selected for the final artwork are a toque and a fidget spinner. “Those objects seem completely unrelated,” says Stewart. “But the ties between them are quite close. The toque was brought in by one of the Girl Guides we did a session with. It was converted from an old sweater by her grandmother and given to her. The fidget spinner was given by a granddaughter to her grandmother because she liked it. Both are gifts from one generation to another.”

(Larger than life - Alexander Stewart with the giant lobster claw sculpture)

Serrano says unpredictability also informed the creative process. “The lobster claw was unexpected! It came from one of the seniors’ residences we went to, and it’s one of a pair brought here from the East coast. The claws are huge and were kept because they are beautiful objects. There’s a materiality that expresses strength and fragility, like some of the delicate ceramics we saw.”

“The cowboy hat is interesting because it represents a specific object story from the library itself,” continues Stewart. “Essentially the library became a person with a story. There’s a patron who is there every day and is quite a tall man who always wears a cowboy hat, so you can see him as he walks through the stacks with this hat that bobs through and over the books. One of the librarians was talking about the project and told him he had to participate. He said he didn’t know what to bring so they said, ‘you should just scan your hat!’ The object is iconic, but also very specific.”

(Sculpture of a toque brought to a workshop by a Girl Guide)

Working representationally meant that the artists weren't concerned with creating minutely accurate models of the objects. The artwork’s themes and meaning are not necessarily dependent upon the physical objects say Serrano and Stewart, because the artwork’s story lies within the initial community-based concept and the process that generated the final form. “I do feel like the community engagement and workshops are more the art than the objects,” notes Serrano.  “The objects are almost like a documentation after the fact.”

Stewart continues: “If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a moving, breathing human being is a million. We had this great task of reducing all those millions of words down into something very open to interpretation while also containing all that information. The artwork is not like a list at the back of a book, it’s more like a collection of stories that create a single tone. We found those tones or threads and pulled on them to realize the concept we were working toward.”

The Capilano Library Grand Opening is Friday, November 23 at 10:30am. The library is located at 9915 67 Street.

We’ll post more stories about the Capilano Library public art as the artists proceed with installation.

If you’re interested in exploring the world of DIY 3D scanning, here are the free applications used by the artists in their workshops.

TRNIO - app based photogrammetry

Photoscan (published by Agisoft)

Reality Capture (ultimately used for the bulk of our scans)