(non)semantic process [ version with a driftwood on Shiraoi beach ]

A piece of driftwood lying on the pedestal was picked up by Hirakawa in Shiraoi, Hokkaido. He photographed it and wrote a program that converts the digital image into a sequence of letters by replacing the brightness value of each pixel with the corresponding letter determined by the remainder when that value is divided by the total number of letters in the alphabet. The resulting string of letters is then matched against a dictionary to extract existing English words, which are listed to generate sentences. Two displays show, respectively, the photographed image of the driftwood and the process of searching for English words within the letter sequence generated from the brightness values. On the computer screen, the generated sentences are continuously appended as they are produced. Although meaningful sentences may occasionally appear, such meaning exists only from a human perspective. The work suggests both the possibility of reapprehending nature in a manner different from the usual one and the way nature resists being fully subsumed into meanings assigned by humans.(Ayako Hiizumi, curator)