The Bell Labs Holmdel Complex. Courtesy of Sarah Meyohas.
Ten thousand roses are transformed into digital data sets at the iconic Bell Labs Holmdel Complex in New Jersey. This isn’t the work of a botanist with an archival obsession; this is Roses at Bell, the latest project of Sarah Meyohas, an artist best known for her data-centric and financially-inquisitive artworks, whether considering her stock market paintings or her own cryptocurrency, which operates on a fixed “artistic exchange rate.”A photo posted by Sarah Meyohas (@sarahmeyohas) on
Aug 26, 2016 at 4:04am PDT
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The workers will determine which petals they consider most beautiful. The selected petals will be transported to another room where a different set of individuals will select the petals that they find most attractive, and will “press them to create a physical subset,” according to the press release. Meyohas mentions that archive theory is an important aspect of the project, “in a sense, each interaction with a dataset becomes a part of the archive—that interaction is traced, and inscribed as additional data that can be made to offer up a second level of information.”The rose as a base material for the project extends beyond their alluring aesthetic. Meyohas is primarily interested in the relationship humanity has shared with the flower over time. “We generally consider roses objects of our desire. But they are also subjects of desire, in the sense that their desire has manipulated us into helping them bring copies of themselves into existence, and quite successfully. Genes have encoded information,” the artist explains to The Creators Project.A photo posted by Sarah Meyohas (@sarahmeyohas) on
Aug 24, 2016 at 9:23am PDT
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