Works by the 2005 Daniel Rosenberg Fellowship Award Winner
Media are invited to attend the opening reception, Friday, December 1, 2006, from 6-8 p.m.
Works by the 2005 Daniel Rosenberg Fellowship Award Winner
An exhibition of two large paper-based works and a series of 24 textile pieces by Cody Trepte, the 2005 Daniel Rosenberg Fellowship winner in the Department of Photography and Imaging at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, will go on view December 1, 2006. The works explore the origins of technology through the writings of Alan Turing, a mathematician and cryptographer, who is considered by many to be the father of modern computer science.
Entitled (for Alan Turing), the exhibition will open December 1 and remain on view through January 6, 2007 in the Gulf+Western Gallery (rear of lobby), located at 721 Broadway (at Waverly Place). Gallery hours are 10 a.m. through 7 p.m. weekdays and noon to 5 p.m. on Saturdays. The exhibition is open to the public and admission is free. A photo ID is required when entering the building. (Please note: The building will be closed from December 23 through January 2, 2007). For further information, call 212-998-1930, visit www.photo.tisch.nyu.edu, or email photo.tsoa@nyu.edu. For information about the artist, visit www.codytrepte.com.
Alan Turing (1912-1954) played a key role in the development of computer technology. He first received attention for his work in helping the British forces to break the German code machine, the Enigma, during World War II, providing the edge for the Allies to win the war. Soon after that, Turing developed concepts that were essential in the development of modern computers and are still in use today. Despite Turing’s enormous contributions, in 1952 he was convicted of acts of gross indecency after it was revealed that he was homosexual and was sentenced to an experimental hormone therapy. Two years later he committed suicide.
Trepte’s works address the artist’s fascination with the technology and theory the British mathematician and cryptographer produced during his lifetime, the bitter tragedy in the scientist’s personal life story, and his legacy. For example, in a copy of Turing’s 33-page seminal essay On Computable Numbers in which the scientists invented a universal machine to accomplish all tasks-a computer-Trepte removed with an x-acto knife all of the text except for the ones and zeros. The artist says that by preserving only the binary code present in the text, Trepte creates a recursive artifact of Turing’s work: he applies the very concepts Turing invented to the mathematician’s own writing.
The artist uses a similarly tedious and intentionally inefficient process that directly contrasts with Turing’s digital language to collect the space from between the words in another of the mathematician’s influential essays Computing Machinery and Intelligence. “By conceptually casting’ the weight of the negative space in Turing’s text, the resulting group of five paper works highlights the literal void within the text itself and gives new form to the absence created by the mathematician’s life cut short,” noted Trepte.
Also included in the exhibition are the more than two dozen cross-stitched works that explore Trepte’s more personal connection to Alan Turing. Translating into binary code the title of each piece (The world is binary, Code and Cody, and I wonder if we would have been friends, among others), Trepte, in a meditative process, then stitched each phrase into black and white grids offering insight into his fascination with the impact of Turing’s life in our contemporary moment.
The Daniel Rosenberg Fellowship was established in 1989 by Irwin and Civia Rosenberg in memory of their son Dan, who completed his B.F.A. degree in the Department of Photography in 1988. Each year since its inception, the fellowship enables one graduating senior to pursue a project involving travel. A panel consisting of Stanley Greenberg, Jane Hait, and Katy Howe selected Trepte as the 2005 recipient.
Cody Trepte received his B.F.A. from New York University’s Department of Photography and Imaging in 2005. He has participated in group exhibitions nationally and has worked collaboratively with artist Ariel Goldberg and with choreographer Julian Barnett. Trepte’s work has been released on a CD project in Canada and has been previewed in the The New York Times. This is the artist’s debut solo exhibition.
The Department of Photography and Imaging is an intensive four-year BFA program centered on the making and understanding of images. It is a diverse department embracing multiple perspectives. The students work in virtually all modes of analog, digital, and multimedia photo-based image making, exploring photo-based imagery as personal and cultural expression. For further information on the department, please visit our website, www.photo.tisch.nyu.edu.