From Translation to Transcoding The term « transcoding » originates from the field of computers and more precisely from the conversion of one digital format to another. However, this terminology appears more and more in the cultural context as a new paradigm beyond common media theories. It addresses the issue of correspondence of signs which one medium operates within another.
We now draw with algorithm, copy/paste in paintings, think resolution in photography or sculpt in 3D… All illustrate transcoding of these two spheres – the cultural and the technological one. This isologic approach has been addressed in Fluxus and concept art by the term of intermedia and now emerges in form of transmedia. The exhibition explores the trans-lation/coding of signs in between different forms of expression as a possible reading of actual artistic production.
« Testing the limits of materiality, Barry produced this poster for an exhibition that had neither a location nor a date. The address is a post-office box, and the telephone number for the gallery is an answering service with a recorded message describing the “work.†The work was the release, by the artist, of five measured volumes of odorless, colorless, noble gasses into the atmosphere in various locations surrounding Los Angeles, where they would diffuse and expand naturally into infinity.
While documentary photographs were taken of the action of the releases, the only physically tangible evidence of the work would remain the poster, published by the New York art dealer Seth Siegelaub, who stated, “He has done something and it’s definitely changing the world, however infinitesimally. He has put something into the world but you just can’t see it or measure it. Something real but imperceptible. » (sources : Moma).
