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The Cult of the Infinite

Part 2 Project 2010
Isaac Barraclough
 University of Huddersfield | UK
The work centres on a personal narrative inspired by Jorge Luis Borges’ short story The Book of Sands and the revelation of an infinite book to the protagonist. The story has been expanded on in the form of an epilogue, whereupon the book has passed hands to a group of individuals who proceed to form a sacred cult around the book and its limitless contents.

The thesis aims to explore the idea of infinity in an architecture and also the idea of the common and understood when revealed to us in an unknown and intimidating fashion. This is primarily revealed in the guise of ‘The Book’ and the house it resides in; all of this in turn, supposedly lies within a ravine in the Pyrenees – but ultimately, everything may not be as it first apparently seems.

The story and the work is introduced as part of a collection of documents supposedly found within a suitcase unearthed in the French Pyrenees.

The book is the focal point of a community of unknown size and provides the basis of daily ritual there. The day-to-day activities of the people who reside within the community provide for its sustenance and operate much as a monastery would. The key difference is that their scripture is a very real book: which to the extent of their knowledge holds literally all of what has been, what will be and what is. It will also hold everything that has never been, never will be and never is.

This is The Cult of The Infinite.

A place where an infinite lives meet an infinite book and their endless attempts to extract and catalogue its contents into an infinite library…



The post-graduate design thesis forms a year long quest. The narrative of this journey explores the Remote and the Infinite, drawing the viewer into a parallel reality and engaging him in the Cult of these dangerous and corrupting forces.

A suitcase acquired in the Pyrenees in 2007 contains a number of extraordinary artefacts. By the painstaking analysis of this fragmented archaeology the author presents us with an exquisite but tantalising image of another world, that is both tangible yet mutable, mystical and allegorical, exploring and synthesizing multi-layered emergent themes, and enticing the viewer within the narrative and ultimate committal to the sect comprising worshipful scribes, readers, librarians, who are all compelled to share the quest of the ‘Cult of the Infinite’.

The viewer is immersed in a philosophically formed esoteric proposition rigorously explored and exquisitely declared via an expansive edition of sublime hand drawn renderings. Fight Club meets John Martin as a spatial construct.

Tutor(s)
Mr Gerard Bareham
2010
The Book of Sands is a mythical book infinite in length. Those who are exposed to it are enslaved by the potential it holds - the answer to everything. In 2006 a suitcase is found buried in the South of France in the Pyrenees.
The contents of the suitcase seem to portray a community that held this very Book at its centre. Within the suitcase among the drawings, a diary was discovered. On its pages was scrawled an account of the original discovery of The Book.
Early investigation into the form of the construct revealed the emergence of a ravine like topographical feature in which buildings were built, suspended or seemingly hovered.
The diary mentions the House that the cult leaders resided in prior to their exposure to The Book. The House itself seems to have been replicated and fragmented throughout the drawings - Theory holds that these were fabrications manifested by The Book.
Sections such as this were concluded to be nothing more than conceptual images, produced early in the Author's attempts to contemplate their new surroundings.
An aerial plan of the Ravine at its crucial point: The Gourd. The Gourd is the crux of The Ravine itself, the impossible axis on an impossible infinite line - The housing of The Book as it warps the very fabric of space around itself.
The House fragments and contorts into the residential complex of The Cult - an infinite lives meet the infinite pages of an infinite book...
The Gourd - housing The Book and its infinite pages...
The infinite Library - the systematic cataloguing of The Book into a never ending construction of shipping containers...
Section through the fragmented House - the daily lives of the cult members is shrouded in doubt over their place in a boundless universe and where it was they originally came from...
Section through the Gourd and the container of The Book. Beyond lies the limitless contents of the Library...
Section through the rows upon rows of shipping containers holding the catalogued contents of The Book. People spend years pacing its infinite walkways...
The environmental systems at work in the Ravine consist of the huge waterwheels used to power dynamos and the continual ritual of the burning of heresy...
A Scribe House - the relentless task of reading and cataloguing the contents of The Book ready for inclusion in the Library all happens in small scholarly rooms such as this...
That which is deemed as heresy is mercilessly eradicated in the fires of the furnaces deep in the bowels of the Ravine... The faith must remain pure...
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