Rachel Egenhoefer: Eatable Codes
Title:
- Eatable Codes
Artist(s) and People Involved:
Exhibiting Artist(s):
Symposium:
- ISEA2004: 12th International Symposium on Electronic Art
- More artworks from ISEA2004:
Artist Statement:
Rachel Beth Egenhoefer considers her Commodore 64 computer and Fischer Price Loom to be defining objects of her childhood. She makes visceral representations of binary numbers in candy and knitting.
Eatable Codes invites visitors to take a chocolate but leave the wrapper, thus revealing a code in the form of chocolate/no chocolate, or zeros and ones. The punchcardesque image is translated in real time into binary digits revealing the code of chocolate. The 127 chocolates correspond to the 127 characters of the ASCII keyboard.
“Binary numbers are the language of computers”, Egenhoefer explains. “These numbers ideally achieve my goat as an artist constantly: to make the intangibte tangible while translating that into the visual image. I have used binary codes both physically and conceptually. Some of my work directly stems from the actual zeros and ones, other works relate more abstractly through the ideas of order, structure, memory, and communication.”