10,000 Unwanted Books Overtake the Streets of Melbourne

We know how some of you bristle at the sight of used books repurposed in art, so it’s with more than a little trepidation that we tell you about an epic installation by Spanish art collective Luzinterruptus that recently went up in Melbourne, Australia as part of the city’s Light in Winter festival. Some 10,000 discarded books collected by the Salvation Army were used in the project; the public was invited to take home any copies they wanted at the end of the month-long intervention. (If the piece looks a bit familiar, perhaps you caught Literature vs Traffic when a much smaller version was installed under the Brooklyn Bridge back in 2010.) Click through for some additional photos courtesy of Architizer, and be sure to let us know what you think of the work in the comments!

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Books light up our lives. How lovely to see those books themselves lit from within. Helpfully they will find homes.

This is so empowering and beautiful. The light falling on the books, dappling them so gently. The way in which the books are casually open just waiting to be perused and maybe taken home. Like a queue of orphans... Only wish I could have been there to experience it. What a treasure!

I love this idea! But I don't agree with the possibility to walk on the books. According to me should be present a special route among books for walking near them but NOT on !!

This is too beautiful. I am actually crying because I'm overwhelmed, although, this never happens here. But really, one word: beautiful.

I can't deny that this is beautiful, but it makes me feel so sad. Paper books are becoming worthless in the digital age-- it's hard to believe that just a few hundred years ago, books were luxuries reserved for royalty and the very rich. These pictures remind me of those photographs of Germans carting stacks of money around in wheelbarrows between the wars: worthless paper that used to have value because of the agreements we made as a society. Once that faith is gone, it all just turns back into paper.

All those beautiful books. I'd be there picking up everything I could. I will have nightmares about rain and inclement weather.

I can't imagine anyone bristling at THIS art installation using books. That's astonishingly beautiful, and I love that people are invited to take books home. What an amazing, romantic way to fall in love with a book. What takes it beyond pretty and into otherworldly and gorgeous, though, are the little lights on the pages of the books. if Faeries have lending libraries, I like to think it looks like this.

Oh my god. I don't think I could actually handle being there, I'd try to take all the books and then start crying or some shit from being too overwhelmed/overstimulated.