KIOSK: Mark Napier
Mark Napier (USA)
Sacred Code (Old Testament), 2003
Wood podium, LCD, CPU, software
Private Collection, Brussels
In Sacred Code, Mark Napier has created algorithms that read the holy texts (The Old Testament, The New Testament and the Koran) bit by bit, literally reading the text as a stream of zeroes and ones. At this lowest level of information, the text becomes a topography, a marking of electronic impulses. The artwork translates the stream of bits into motion: two calligraphic marks, one black and one white, chase one another in a seemingly endless dance on screen, leaving behind faint trails as the move. Rather than interpreting the meaning of the texts, the artwork reads the "shape" of the texts: the shifting topography of binary code drives the motion of the black and white trails on screen. In the process, a binary world is represented as a cloud of shifting shades of gray.
Mark Napier (USA) is part of the KIOSK-gallery, curated by Yves Bernard and Domenico Quaranta.
