CODE

2018

Code, Vinyl, dimensions 31.43cm^2 and 2 * 15min., shown at MMOMA (Moscow Museum of Modern Art), Moscow (Russia), 2021, Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid, (Spain), 2020, Greenhouse, Berlin (Germany), 2018

About
“CODE” is an exhibition on a vinyl record. For the record Byrke Lou presents a sonic curation of her work “.ctu_isbtm”. On Side A the listener encounters bits of “.ctu_isbtm” through “.fa”, a virtual sound system designed by the artist. The system scans the artist’s glass sculptures via a live video feed and programmatically encodes them within a language of pitches and rhythms. The generated sound patterns are re-encountered on the B-Side of the LP, which contains the recording of a live-coding-session. By adapting her work for the vinyl format, Byrke Lou creates a complex interplay of dimension, information and time that simultaneously embraces and reveals processes of coding, encoding and decoding. Along with Byrke Lou’s sound piece the physical record features words by AGF.

Why
“.fa” was originally created by Stanislav Nikolov, Rob Clouth and Byrke Lou as research into how sonifying anthropological objects could reveal more about their meaning and history. The artists imagined relics from the future and how they could be brought to tell their stories. Byrke Lou then extended the system and combined it with her glass sculptures, which examine the history of explanations of the milky way (compare “.ctu_isbtm”).
In a search for alternative gallery spaces and exhibition formats research and waves developed their series of vinyl releases, which curate artworks on a vinyl format. They found Byrke Lou’s combination of glass sculptures and the .fa system a perfect setup for one of their releases and developed the final concept in collaboration with her.