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Mona Lisa In Base64, 2014
Canvas cloth, inkjet print.
70 x 47 in
Art has, since its commercial inception, been driven by Capitalism. What happens to this driving force once notions of ownership are taken away? What happens to what Walter Benjamin called art’s ‘aura’, when it is digitally reproduced? Here, arguably the most celebrated work of art in human history is seen in full computer code. It is art as it is saved on our hard drives, unrecognizable to the uninformed human eye.
What is Base64?
Base64 is a mechanism to enable representing and transferring binary data over mediums that allow only printable characters.It is most popular form of the “Base Encoding”, the others known in use being Base16 and Base32. The need for Base64 arose from the need to attach binary content to emails like images, videos or arbitrary binary content.
The height of an adult man, from a distance the image on the wall may be mistaken for a huge grey rectangle.
When one looks very close, letters can be identified, but are impossible to understand.
As the viewer moves closer, they will discover that there is much more to the piece.
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