"1 Image, 20 meters, 580 interruptions" is a project designed during 2016 by Ana Guzmán and Mora Lightowler. This project was placed in CheLA (Latin American Experimental Hypermedia Center), Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2016.
The whole project is based on the idea that digital images are built as a loom. Every digital image is a 2D matrix of numbers (sometimes tensors because of its deepness given by channels of colors) that follows a pattern of constructions: one pixel follows another and another until the width of the image is reached, then, a new line of pixels starts until it reaches the right height. Following this idea, It is possible to say that images depicted something because of this pixel order, but one image could be another if this order changes: there could be millions and millions of others images just by switching one pixel to another.
In the Information Theory, the minimum quantifiable unit is the bit, which is the value of one election between two equiprobable alternatives. In images where every pixel has two options (black or white) sometimes there is much information which is redundant even though this information is necessary to reduce the probability that the message won’t be understood. But it could be reduced because of the human vision economy which allows us to understand patterns, shapes, backgrounds and so on thanks to context and experience.
Even though information is reduced in a highly percent and the support is not a 2D canvas, It is still possible to see the recognizable shapes depicted there.
Starting from the original image with the new sense of reading and the reduction of information to the minimum necessary to make it recognizable, the work is established as a spatial journey, where that same information is reorganized to generate another meaning. That is, we have the same image deployed in the space.
The main support for the images was 20 meters of 3 mm diameter electroluminescent wire coated with phosphor that, when fed with 220V current, generates constant light. This light was bits with information “0”. Heat-shrink tubing was used for making the interruptions (bits with information “1”). The wire with the hole information was “flatten” and that line traveled through space, not to generate a recognizable image, but to generate rhythms and cadences as it traveled through space.
