EXHIBITION
Code - Talk
A work about language-based encryption, code history and laser-based surveillance technologies.
Code Talk is an installation that investigates encryption, surveillance, and intelligence technologies. The video features one of the original 29 Navajo men who developed the Navajo Code and served as a Code Talker in WWII.
Set against the backdrop of a large data center, the work juxtaposes modern algorithmic storage with earlier systems in which orally transmitted code relied entirely on human memory to become operative.The 93 year old man recites by heart the sound sequence of the Navajo Code Alphabet which was commissioned by the U.S. militar. The video’s audio track is not merely played back; it is routed through a laser-microphone system constructed by the artist herself. Within the spatial installation, this becomes a second, satellite station to the main screen: a setup in which a beam of light and a laser-microphone receiver enable the actual act of listening through a pane of glass.
The artist presents a custom-built, artist-designed apparatus that enables remote eavesdropping. By drawing on this historical lineage, Stumreich’s installation links early experiments in surveillance with contemporary technological practices. Léon Theremin’s pioneering work on contactless surveillance technologies, such as devices detecting vibrations on objects, can be seen as a precursor to the idea of remote eavesdropping later perfected with laser systems.
The laser listening device is a striking illustration of the way the intrusive potential and the secret and discomforting universal presence of technological dispositives, used to transmute, archive, and further use any kind of communication. In this context, the Navajo Code Talker stands as a historical counterpoint, embodying a form of human-based cryptography that relied entirely on spoken language rather than technological mediation.While the original coding is in this case intrinsic to language, the listening device goes straight to the coded information in order to bring it into the present with the sound of the latest technology across the time-leap of the reproduced speech act and its decoding.
Shows (Selection):
Marler medienkunstpreise 2016,
Bildraum 07 hosted by Ars Electronica,