One to Zero
Feral File
Apr 22 -

One to Zero is a group show on Feral File that I co-curated with Viktor Timofeev.

The exhibition title One to Zero reverses the tech-startup concept of "zero to one," in which the entrepreneur charts a path from being financially empty-handed to monetizing the future. We all saw that big-boy bubble burst somewhere between a plague and an invasion, its soiled product narrowly missing the bin. Such a downturn is felt as a deflation in the air, the word smelling like austerity, spare means, a foul order breaking down. Rather than trying to reassemble the broken money machine, this show proposes slowing down—if not outright stopping—at the brink of a theoretical high.

To take a deflationary approach is to manifest the contradiction of making and sharing digital artwork today. One must have technical literacy and artistic sensitivity to the technology—all while attending to a growing pressure to find the money hidden inside the medium. At times the artist’s effort may consist entirely of fighting to fit the format of their chosen platform. How does the market look today? Do the individual goods add up to a meaningful whole?

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Each work in One to Zero employs a mechanism—crossing symbolic, computational, and natural systems—whose jumbled output one can read, even as its viability to the money machine is unclear. Together, the works spell out an unspoken rule: that digital artforms today can and must answer to multiple callers, using means that can scarcely address their full meaning.

Featuring 26 editions of work by Laura Brown, Mira Dayal, Ryan Kuo, Dirk Paesmans, Adriana Ramić, Laurel Schwulst and Sydney Shen, Viktor TImofeev, and Damon Zucconi.

My contribution to the show is Downtime, a browser-based piece with a strong emphasis on audio.

4.22.24