For the Fall 2015 Art Online program, Encrypt_Decrypt is a multi-layered project which challenges the limitations of digital and physical space. Moving fluidly back and forth from data to image to object to the web, Joshua Liebowitz questions objecthood by incorporating and analyzing processes related to networked technologies in the conception, formation and display of his work.
As a launching point, Liebowitz recorded the sounds that his hard drive gave off while in a state of encryption and decryption, and converted this information to a visual image. In this 2D image, the frequency and amplitude bands derived from the leaked password key-bits (used to access his hard disk during encrypting and decrypting)correlate to the color intensity and edge characteristics displayed in a spectrogram. The result is transposed again to create a 3D rendering, and sculptural object installed in physical space with a projection of the 2D image. The Encrypt_Decrypt art online exhibition is comprised of a live feed of the sculpture in its physical surroundings on view in the same frame meeting a solely digital version of the 2D spectrogram image that birthed it. Pushing theses conceptual boundaries even further, the online exhibition continues within the space on a Electric Objects (LINK) EO1 device.
New forms of material understanding have emerged, as so much of the human condition has evolved to exist in real space as much as in a digital space. The terms, “Neomateriality” or “hypermateriality” are often used to describe this new ecology; the accept reassessment of the materiality of all things in relation to their digital influencers. Liebowitz addresses not only the object and its digital engagement but also its placement in space as an integral component to its understanding. This exhibition is the culmination of the sculptural object and digital data, both seemingly disparate parts that rely on one another to form the final work.
