WHY DOGS SMILE AND CHIMPANZEES CRY
Why don’t haircuts hurt?
Why don’t it look like the way that it talk?
Why don’t sheep shrink when it rains?
Why don’t they give them guns?
‘Why don’t they learn English?’
Why don’t we go somewhere and love
Why don’t we try staying home?
Why don’t you carve other animals
Why don’t you do right (Get me some money, too)

For the book, Larned conducted searches-by-title on LEO, the New York Public Library’s online catalog, by formulating questions such as “How do” and “Where are”. The resulting lists of book titles are at once funny, poignant, strange, sad, earnest, remarkably current, and urgent.  It is the age of information and everyone is looking for answers.

The titles are paired with a text by Isaac Asimov’s 1984 book “How did we find out about computers?’, which was located by the artist in the stacks of the NYPL. The text anticipates all the technologies of convenience we use today, from internet shopping to amazon.com search-within-a-book to weather.com to RSS feeds. Asimov’s optimism puts in relief the undercurrent of dark anxiety inherent in the titles of the books.

Search Results was produced using two technologies, that of the book and that of the computer. The book titles are handset in Stephenson Blake Grotesque no. 18 and printed letterpress. The Isaac Asimov text was designed on a Mac, and then outputted onto transparency and printed silkscreen on caution-yellow Fabriano Ingres paper. The book is bound back-to-back, with corrugated plastic Corx covers, and opens as a laptop.

printed silkscreen & letterpress
handset types: SB Grotesque no.18, Gill Sans Cameo
Fabriano Ingres paper
Corx covers + anti-static bag sealed with industrial stickers
8.5 x 6.5 x 1 inches
32 pages
edition of 50
2006
possible catalogue keywords: computers, books, libraries, found poems

SEARCH RESULTS can be found in the collections of Wesleyan University, University of Washington, Multnomah Public Library, Scripps College, and Chapman University. Emily K. Larned is currently working toward her MFA at Yale School of Art. Her books can be found in over sixty public collections, including MoMA, Tate Britain, Library of Congress, the Getty, and the Smithsonian. Her work is exhibited widely, including in 2006: ‘Construct’ at Florida Atlantic University, ‘Treasures of the John Wilson Room’ at Multnomah County Public Library, and ‘Euclid to e-books: ideal books ideas’ at Hofstra Museum.