Unrealized Archive 7

Text to Image

16

LOIS, 2017/2022

LOIS (Federico Perez Villoro and Ian Keliher)

Library, Essay

The Library of Imagined Symbols (LOIS) is a collection of fictional symbols in literature. It archives text descriptions of marks representing entities within nonexistent social orders — from holographic logos across Tokyo-Bay in William Gibson's Neuromancer, to David Foster Wallace's cartoonish Mister Squishy, to Ayn Rand's dollar signs stamped in gold on cigarettes. The library studies the symbolic power of graphics as they render as mental images in the collective imaginary.