“Can technology be understood outside of itself?” asks one of the titles in a series of textiles at Cody Trepte’s (for Alan Turing) show. It’s a question that is very relevant throughout the artist’s three works on display at NYU’s Gulf & Western Gallery.
Trepte has taken the language of technology—in this case, binary code, the language of computer technology—and placed it outside of its context. Now, we, as humans, aren’t really meant to understand binary code. All those 1s and 0s don’t mean a thing, no matter how long you happen to stand and stare at them. But they are the only things that make sense to a computer.
Alan Turing was a forefather of modern computer science, and Trepte’s passion for Turing’s life and his visionary work underlies the obsessive-compulsive nature of this art. Although Turing was celebrated for breaking the German code machine during World War II, his fellow Brits turned on him when they discovered he was a homosexual and forcibly subjected him to experimental hormone therapy. Turing died by suicide not long after in 1954.
In his 20 textile pieces, Trepte honors Turing’s life and legacy with titles related to the great mathematician. Trepte translated these phrases into binary code and stitched the resulting data into black and white grids. They make no sense in and of themselves, but it is Trepte’s process that gives them meaning.
The same goes for Trepte’s treatment of Turing’s essay “Computing Machinery and Intelligence.” The artist cut out the spaces between the words of the text and arranged the bits into rows; something we can’t read. Trepte wasn’t too exact in his cutting, though, and there are tiny black spots scattered among the blankness—dark traces of letters, which are traces of words, which are traces of language. With only the spaces in between being visible, the human language, just like binary code, cannot be understood outside of itself.
Instead of cutting out the space in between words, Trepte excised lines of text from Turing’s “On Computable Numbers,” an essay that introduced the concept of a computer. With his trusty X-acto knife, Trepte left only 1s and 0s of various sizes remaining. The language of the computer stands, and the human element has been removed. But still, it lingers; as the ghost of Turing leaves traces among Trepte’s meditations.
Through Jan. 6. Tisch Gulf & Western Gallery (rear of lobby), 721 B’way (at Waverly Pl.), 212-998-1930; free.
