Synthetic Source Code

55cm x 35cm approx (red stoneware)

ASC11 is an acronym for American Standard Code for Information Interchange. It is a character encoding standard for electronic communication. ASCII codes represent text in computers, telecommunications equipment, and other devices. By representing each ASCII character as a corresponding binary code, this allows computers to store and manipulate text in a binary format, which is the only format that digital devices can directly work with.

It was used in punch cards, one of the first methods to store information digitally. For me, it marks the transition from the analogue to the digital.

These works present the words natural and synthetic in analogue and binary form with the ASC11 code. They also present the phrase Synthetic Source Code as analogue and binary. The analogue is represented by the heavily textured blocks that imbue it with a context of its making. The binary blocks have a reduced texture, that eludes to their de-contextualisation or re-contextualisation. Can we really live in a world where so much information is stripped of context, and then re-packaged and re-contextualised? In some cases, yes, absolutely, it is an imperative. In other cases, no. There seems to be no agreement upon which is best fort each scenario.