[spectre] OPENING TODAY: CASPAR STRACKE: MAIN FRAME @ THE THING

[caspar stracke]

PRESS RELEASE

CASPAR STRACKE: MAIN FRAME

Opening reception: Friday, November 28, 7 - 10 PM

THE THING
601 W 26th St. 4th floor
New York, NY 10001
212.937.0444  
http://www.thing.net

"Main Frame" is on view from November 28 to December
4, Dusk until 7pm (closed Sunday).

live: http://camera.thing.net


THE THING presents "Main Frame," a site-specific video
installation by Caspar Stracke.

The first installation displays Stracke’s
single-channel work, "Zuse Strip," which uses THE
THING's server racks as a literal and metaphoric
framing device. 
In "Zuse Strip," Stracke investigates the encrypting
and decrypting of codes, and traces misinterpretations
of such codes emerged over time within "media 
archaeology." The video draws on the work of German
computer pioneer Konrad Zuse, the research of the
archaeologist and linguist John Chadwick, and the 
practice of deciphering ancient Greek scripts.

The second installation, "Proximity," plays sequences
from eight feature films that Stracke enlarged into a
pixilated grid of 16 x 5 panels, thus rendering 
the images into abstract patterns in which objects are
only vaguely recognizable. The enlarged fields exactly
match the sizes of the 80 panels of THE THING's
factory-style windows, and when projected onto the
paper-covered 
panes, the projection can be seen from both inside and
outside the building. 
Along with the pixilated film clips, Stracke includes
the scenes' original soundtracks in which protagonists
describe their vision in a state of near blindness,
while others attempt to describe their hallucinations.

"Main Frame" highlights two ways of processing and
displaying computer data. 
"Zuse Strip" places computer history into the "guts"
of a functional data-processing Internet server;
"Proximity" transforms the windows of the office 
into a giant output for display. "Main Frame" makes
reference to the function 
of a computer network, while transforming the entire
space into a computer-processing unit itself.

Caspar Stracke is a video artist basd in New York and
Hamburg. "Zuse Strip" was shown at "Future Cinema" at
ZKM earlier this year, and will also be seen in the
same exhibition at the ICC in Japan in December. He is
currently an Eyebeam resident, and a THING member
since 1999.

http://www.videokasbah.net

This exhibition was supported by the Experimental
Television Center 
http://www.experimentaltvcenter.org




THE THING /// 601 W 26th St 4th floor NY 10001
212.937.0444 



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