n01se
22 January – 26 March 2000
n01se is a set of connected exhibitions of art and science, about human communication, about information and transformation, the sounds of colours and the shape of a taste, about recognising pattern, and the quest for a universal language.
Digital technology, according to the ads, promises escape from the incoherence and decay of our contemporary world, the means of ordering, preserving and transmitting information, open access and use, no scratches, no crackles or pops.
n01se showcases and questions the digital, reclaiming its antecedents from Noah’s attempts to produce a new world order, to aboriginal sand painting, to Robert Hooke’s microscopic dot, to Braille and Morse, to Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine and the brain that conceived it.
Now, through digital technology we can ‘see’ the universe, the world without clouds, the surface of an atom and the movement of a cosmic ray. But what are we seeing? And how does this digital world relate to the untidy world we live in?
Enter the land of ‘The Preacher and the Chorus’, a world of ‘Talking Heads’, a universe of ‘Disinformation’, and find out how to say milk in a hundred different languages!
