User:Lbattich/Vanities
Context
The Swedish magazine CRE are currently producing 4 issues based on 4 books in the Bible. I was invited by Nomas*Projects, guest curators for the Ecclesiastes edition, to contribute to the publication with a work that responds to my research, understanding and interpretatoin of this ancient book, and particularly in relation to my work on binary encoding.
Vanities, Chapter 1 (1611 Edition)
The text is a rendering of Ecclesiastes Ch.1 from the King James Bible 1611 edition into binary. The encoded binary text contains the original 1611 version, including its antiquated spelling, verse numbers and line breaks. I have singled out one word from the text and preserved it in its original form, as the concept of vanity stood out in my interpretation of Ecclesiastes.
Binary encoding makes everything flat and equal, as the machine does not discriminate between information, and the content that this information carries. I wanted to suggest that there may be concepts that cannot be completely flattened.
My interest is to look at the contrast between the language of digital information (a meta-text for machines to communicate with each other) and a text that is concerned with existential questions of human beings, and to address the tensions created in between these two texts.
Vanities (1611) Edition - version 2
File:Vanities 1611 - version2.pdf
This second version is made of selected verses (instead than a whole chapter).