Towards Entropy
Projection for Everything is Number at Site Gallery,
Sheffield
When it comes to digital images, which are simply arrays of
pixels, everything is indeed number. Any object or person
whose image is captured on the computer becomes a series of
digits. This is graphically illustrated by the wall sized
pictures of the surface of Mars which NASA made from data
from an early probe to the planet. The geographical
features in gradations of orange and brown, are seen when
you approach the picture, to be coloured squares (pixels)
– closer inspection still reveals that the numbers
which denote the colours are printed in the squares, which
it seems have then been laboriously filled in with coloured
crayons. The data from the camera has been translated into
a series of numbers which have been printed out on a grid,
a giant colouring in puzzle for the scientists. Nowadays of
course the control of the colours of the pixels on our
screens is determined and executed by the graphics card
thousands of times a second, but the principles remain the
same.
While the numbers may remain hidden from the end user,
everything we see on our monitors is number.
‘Towards Entropy’ hints at the fragility of
this system by presenting a series of iconic symbols,
representing ‘life, the universe and
everything’ - after a brief initial appearance in the
middle of a black screen, a dot matrix pictogram rapidly
fragments, each dot moving away from it’s starting
position in a random direction, leaving in its wake an
earlier generation of display device – the clicking
electro-mechanical counter.
As they appear and change these counters emit clicks and
clunks, which gradually diminish in frequency as the
counters reach their mature, continually cycling
state.
After a few minutes the screen consists mainly of
shimmering counting digits, with the occasional click,
eventually the screen goes blank, and the process is
repeated with another pictogram.
The descent towards entropy, and mankind’s optimistic
refusal to give in to it, is replayed in an endless, but
always changing cycle.