Jennifer Brookes: A few years ago Eric told me about a collection of gorgeous libraries in the form of a blog titled “bookporn.” In short, a girl named Rachel Leow, inspired by the beauty of the libraries at her school (Cambridge University), set out photographing buildings abounding with books all over the world. At that point I knew that I loved books, but I didn’t realize I loved the way books looked in space, and I haven’t gotten over it since. Rachel hit some nice libraries/bookstores in Seattle, but she somehow missed the libraries at the University of Washington. The one in this video is called Suzzallo, dubbed the Harry Potter room, for obvious reasons. Taking pictures in that space was inevitably embarrassing; just the sound of my breath entering and escaping my body seemed to disrupt the silence, so my camera’s shutter clicking over 300 times was similar to a mini war anthem. My apologies, UW students.

Eric Peterson: You don’t need to make musical instruments to make music. There’s probably a long history to vocal music that I don’t know or really have the time to look into. I do know that the human voice and body is incredibly versatile. Icelandic singer and songwriter Björk explored her own voice, and the voices of others to their limits on her almost entirely a cappella album Medúlla (you might be most familiar with her performance of Oceana, off of the aforementioned album, at the opening ceremony of the 2004 Olympic Games). Rather than collaborate with world renowned beat boxers and vocalists, I decided to try and fill out the sound with other sounds my body can produce, including snaps, claps, and heartbeats.