Katie Paterson (b. 1981, UK)
Earth-Moon-Earth, 2007

Moonlight Sonata by Beethoven is coded into Morse code, sent as radio signals to the Moon, their bouncing reflections captured on earth and decoded back into music, distorted from the original due to loss or transformation of data along the way.

This has some contextual parallels to my practice, more as input to some ideas being nursed in the background rather than particular works I can point to. Firstly, I am somewhat curious about and amused by the concept of sublime and works “big in size”. While not having easy access to building monumental sculptures or anything like that, I started exploring strategies how to “go big” with minimal means, most often in a conceptual manner, rethinking notion of size, how it can be expressed and what does it do (e.g. I have just rendered a 24 hours multichannel sound piece). So bouncing off some signals of the moon is certainly inspiring.

Then there is the Morse code. Coding/decoding is practice that I love to hate in artistic context. Partially, because it tends to reduce art to a riddle with a correct answer. But then again, all human engagement with the world could be described in terms of coding/decoding, showing that it is just a matter of perspective and emphasis. And interesting things may happen when errors occur in the process or wrong decoding keys are being used etc. One of my classmates has interpreted one of my ongoing paintings as a coded message (in a Morse kind of sense) – without me having intended it at all. So I am developing some strategies that may involve intentional coding/miscoding. Stay tuned.