Double-and-Add
Introduction
Angela Bulloch, Anthony McCall, and Haroon Mirza create works that use light, sound, and color to call attention to the persistent physicality of audio-visual equipment. Double-and-Add is a mathematical term for computations used in binary coding of electronic and digital processes. Evoking the flickering screens that have come to mediate much of our experience, the works on view bring to light the power of seemingly abstract mathematical sequences to activate intense sensory effects.
Each artist reconfigures the familiar drone of technologies commonplace in their time—slide projection, pixilation, sound amplification, artificial lighting—into installations of palpable energy. The rapid-fire loop of handmade slides in a 1972 piece by Anthony McCall, a pioneer in the useof light as a sculptural element, suggests both the promise and deterioration of relentless technological advance. In subsequent generations, Angela Bulloch and Haroon Mirza also emphasize the stripped-down formalism of electronic components. Their artworks amplify the effects of automated circuits, channeling the insistent presence of electronic feedback in everyday life.
Judith Tannenbaum, Sabrina Locks
Exhibition images
Articles
In the flood of digital-ness that comprises our daily experience, it can be easy to forget that most of what all of our complex devices are doing is simply counting. It's no coincidence that the word digital comes from digits, our fingers, that most elementary of counting machines.