Codework

Animated short in two parts, single channel projection

6 min, 24 seconds

2006

This work was exhibited first in a group show, "Ghosts in the Machine and other Tales" curated by Pooja Sood at the Apeejay Media Gallery in New Delhi. In Codework I have looked at a very simple piece of PHP (a scripting language widely deployed on the internet) code that enables a user to subscribe or unsubscribe to a mailing list. Through two small narratives, I formulate speculative scenarios to attempt an expanded annotation of this code. Though the code at hand is the primary focus, I also try to tentatively reflect on some of the larger implications for our cognitive understanding of the world around us. At a fundamental level Codework then is an invitation to engage with the technologies of software that undergrid the practices of our everyday life: sending and receiving e-mail, using search engines to ferret out information, sharing mp3 playlists, etc.

But the question of engagement here is not exhausted by mere didacticism. Engagement here would also include negotiating the contours of one's imaginative universe and refusing to view these technological processes as mere instrumentality. An engagement becomes that much more poor if it defers the lyrical and the whimsical for the instrumental and the efficacious. As a visual artist who is interested in science and technology, it is also about being able to stake a claim for the legitimacy of a plural mode of engagement with a discourse that is framed by a highly technical language: solving encryption algorithms oneself cannot be the only way of engaging with the mechanics of secure communication on the internet. Codework then looks at code tangentially, and in attempting to refigure it through narratives and images that allegorically amplify the very structure of its formal logic, seeks to find fresh ways of engagement.