Uncomputer

exhibition — Grailers DAO, Unit

Frieze London

2023-10-04

Entangled Others, self-contained 003

Unit London and GrailersDAO presented "Uncomputer," an exhibition inspired by Alexander Galloway's essay of the same name. The show celebrates the creative potential of error, indeterminacy, and randomness in code-based systems.

The exhibition explores the concept of the 'uncomputer,' which reveals and embraces the indeterminate and unpredictable qualities within computational structures. It challenges traditional understandings of computers as purely rational entities, instead highlighting how error, randomness, and unknowns have become integral to technoscientific knowledge. The artworks in the show demonstrate how these 'uncountable' digital elements can create a more nuanced understanding of our information age.

Artists

Kim Asendorf

Entangled Others

Jan Robert Leegte

Mathcastles

Rudxane

Yazid

Stevie P

Mia Forrest

Roope Rainisto

Thomas Lin Pedersen

Jorge Ledezema

Iskra Velitchkova

Emily Xie

Melissa Wiederrecht

Stefano Contiero

zero glimpse sunflower one (for unit)

Mathcastles

Mathcastles’ zero-knowledge artwork, crafted using a system for drawings that can never be known, but proved to exist through verifiable claims about their abstract features. Built with zk-SNARKs – cryptographic systems that allow statements about secret information to be proved and verified – this artwork gives form to the unknowable, and collides knowledge asymmetry with traditions of mark-making and abstraction in painting.