to whom it may concern
2021, Media object
Credits:
The installation "to whom it may concern" was created for the exhibition "Monopoly on memory", curated by Maria Maksimova, with the support of Goethe Institute Novosibirsk.
The exhibition was part of the German Culture and Language Festival in Vladivostok within the framework of the Year of Germany in Russia 2020/2021.
Used media:
Light billboard, Markov chains algorithm, field recordings.
Size:
150х150х230cm
Description:
The artwork was inspired by the 60 double-sided light billboards located in Vladivostok. The lighting on each side of the billboards burned out gradually and formed 120 unique patterns. These patterns can be considered as visually encrypted text messages from an unknown sender to an unknown addressee.

The focus of the installation was not on the message decryption, but to carry the message's meaning further and generate new ones in case the sender never received them. In this case, the advertising light boxes become not just found objects themself, but they become the readymade artistic image extracted from the contingency of everyday reality.

Installation replicates the lighting structure of existing billboards. Each pattern was transformed into a text string with a length of 88 characters, where 1 represents a lit segment and 0 is an unlit one. New messages are generated via the Markov chains algorithm every 10 seconds based on a text dataset of existing 120 patterns. The algorithm extracts the structure of the encrypted language and produces new messages bypassing decryption. An audio part is based on field recordings near the billboard surroundings. The ambience moves along with the artwork.

The work finds aesthetics in outdoor advertising decaying. The artwork carries on messages of a non-human actor as the seaside humidity bypasses anthropocentric perception. The work enters a dialogue with the saying of Marshall McLuhan: "[Electric light] becomes a conduit of information, but it never carries it". Thus, light patterns cease to be a mere medium and become the message themself.