Binary Citizen

Life in a contemporary and globalizing world is increasingly organized through infinitudes of binary distinctions. Everywhere we go we encounter biophysical systems patterned, digested and morphed through invisible, binary hypertext. Our lives are morphed with measurements, quantities and technologies so much so that numbers are mundane elements of our landscape. Binary citizen explores the profound marks of living in the age shaped through hypertext while also seeking to arouse a sense of global citizenship by drawing attention to macro patterns that connect us., not least of which the very medium of our bodies. Throughout time and place, we have marked our bodies as sites for and of cultural creation. In these works, binary numbers mark the skins of a hybrid identity reflecting something tribal, technical and contemporary. At the  same, our skins remind us that we are visceral and

living and it is this that gives us a sense of presence as we intersect with what is seen and unseen - known and unknown.  These works  ask us to  pause amidst the sea of hypertext in which we are all immersed. As our virtual world expands let us not abandon  an embodied recognition of the diverse delicacies and inter relationships of our biophysical being.

 

 

DIGITAL PLAY

 

Digital play is a performance work developed by Barbara Doran in collaboration with the ‘digital

operators’ - a small performance group whose practices share value for the role of our bodies and the materials we use in contemporary encounters with time and space.  The Digital operators aim to revitalise a sense of play, theatre and tactility and in doing so help create a  new kind of experience with that tribal part of our natures. Digital Play is an interactive, artwork performed by the ‘digital operators’ -  a group of performance artists who play with binary code  (the basis of hypertext)  in public spaces. The digital operators invite participants to convert their names into binary expression, thus drawing out  personal, material and tactile marks that otherwise remain in the domain of cyberspace.  The digital operators also paint their skins in ‘1’s’ and ‘0’s while offering to paint the skins of observers. Participants are invited to post photographs of their drawings of digital signatures or skin paintings the facebook ‘virtual gallery’. As the the works  progress the location becomes covered in white chalk drawings resembling a huge blackboard of calculations - it is a meeting of the mark of our hands and the virtual world.