This article is an independent version of the article published in this issue of DOK Architecture Magazine. You can access the entire magazine via this link:
Timing is cruel.
But that is what separates meaning from noise.
In Jorge Luis Borges’s work titled The Library of Babel, there is a universe consisting of books, each of which is made up of random character sequences.
Most of them consist of meaningless words. Some contain half-truths.
But hidden within this chaos is everything:
your birth, your death, this sentence, the moment you are living right now.
The library is not magical.
Because randomness extends to infinity, every possibility must exist.
This library holds the future.
Still, if you pull any book from the shelves,
You probably won’t find anything.
A random, meaningless sea of letters.
Noise.
Later, this fiction became reality.
The Babylon Library is now available online.
Audio version: 15-second audio clips containing every possible sound combination.
Every sound that can be heard?
It’s already there.
But buried within a static mass.
Because probability alone does not create art.
Context creates.
Time creates.
The viewer creates.
This is a silent truth that we constantly forget:
Art does not emerge solely through creation. It emerges when the world is ready to hear it.
An empty wall is just an empty wall.
Until the right person walks by and sees a canvas.
Until the right time comes and suddenly a whisper turns into a prophecy.
We don’t call something “art” because it is perfect.
When it answers a question we didn’t know we were asking, we call it art.
When it reflects the pain or hope of that moment.
When it stops us in our tracks.
And when it says, “Look closer.”
The Scream Edvard Munch 1893
Sometimes it means a painting.
Sometimes it means a building.
Sometimes it means a scream in a silent room.
Does this mean that artists should always aim to speak on behalf of everyone?
No.
Art owes universality to no one.
It owes honesty.
And if the timing is right,
someone else will find themselves in your work and see a piece of themselves.
You cannot know which line is important.
You never know which brush stroke will stick in your mind.
You can’t know which design will outlast you.
Even the Mona Lisa was just a portrait until the world gave her that smile.
