‘Code’
by
Maya Bhalla
Cyanotype
on Ceramic
Completed
2016
‘Code’
is defined by the Cambridge dictionary as, ‘ a
system of words, letters, or signs used to represent a message in secret form,
or a system of numbers, letters, or signals used to represent something in a
shorter or more convenient form’; or as ‘a set of rules that are accepted as
general principles, or a set of written rules that say how people in a
particular organisation or country should behave.’ The most common and
contemporary use of the word, is in the field of computer programming where
‘code’ is used to create elaborate realities, (shopping, gaming, socialising,
media), within which most of us exist through most of our waking hours. Mirzoef
was right in his critique of contemporary culture as being a ‘totally
constructed visual experience.’ It is in this visual world, constructed by
computer codes, civil codes, and societal codes, that most people choose to
spend their time. We look outwardly for entertainment, information, love, and
other human interactions, but in reality we are looking outwardly into
something- most of the time we are looking outwardly into technology, into the
face of a machine. And this is how we live, via the construction of an
imaginary space based on a string of digits put together. We feed off of what a
program, an external mindset, tells us life should be. Over time and repeated
use of these external systems we have forgotten the difference between what is
a created experience, a programmed like or dislike, a marketed
idea/opinion/fact; and what is our own
unique, individual human experience.
This work, entitled ‘code’, seeks the answer to the very
question of what it means to be human and have a human experience. There is the
constant presence of the outside world with its constructs and alternate
realities, (and we as human beings can choose from many possibilities), and the
reality that we ourselves create within the internal space of our own minds.
Our skin, becomes the membrane, or barrier, or doorway that must be crossed. To
have ‘insight’, one must be able to access one’s own intelligence, to look
beyond the obvious, to transcend the material, the codes, the inventions placed
before them, to a space within themselves. To have ‘insight’ perhaps then
means, to look ‘inside’ one’s own mind to access limitless possibilities.
‘Code’ consists of an androgynous head, bringing into focus the
mind and mind alone. The skin/membrane is infused with computer coding,
illustrating the continuous bombardment of technology and the virtual reality
in which we live. The sculpture has its eyes closed. It is looking within.
Within/without, inside/outside, seeing/knowing, sight/insight- the skin or the
membrane/barrier, doubles up as a scale or balance, and with its own
intelligence decides what goes in and what stays out. Perhaps the way we as
humans exist at this time in this space, it is this balance that is needed.
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