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“Access Codes”: The Politics of Inclusion in Art

Virginia Marano

Image description:   You’re peering into a fragmented digital world, where a retro computer interface unfolds in a patchwork of open windows, layered with mystery and a touch of chaos. In the top left, a window labeled “pain” holds a silent audio bar, whispering unplayed echoes. Below, the “Montage Machine” sputters with scrambled words like “wind” and “hot,” caught in a chaotic dance. To the middle right, two windows reveal blurred memories: a pixelated figure lost in green shadows, and an abstract red blur, more sensation than sight. At the center, a chat box labeled "autoicon/chat" invites conversation with an intimate yet distant text: 2hello. what is it like being an artist? do you feel any pain?” It feels unfinished, waiting for a reply. In the bottom right, a photograph titled “Slideshow (12 of 18)” frames an empty wheelchair in a vast gallery, its haunting presence echoing solitude. The pixelated gray background evokes a glitchy past, where each window is a ghost waiting to be remembered.

Chat function of Donald Rodney: Autoicon, 2000, CD-ROM version

Code, though often invisible, is integral to modern society, shaping technology and reinforcing societal norms. Its dual role as a foundational framework and an enforcer of conventions makes it ripe for critical examination, particularly regarding accesss and inclusion. This project explores how code intersects with norms and art, challenging traditional perceptions of both digital and physical environments, unveiling their hidden mechanisms.

Carolyn Lazard’s works, including Remise Ramp (2021) and A Conspiracy (2017), tests accessibility of museum spaces and their role in enabling interrelational exhchange. Alexa Vaughn’s integration of deafspace into landscape design (Vaughn, 2018) forges a more inclusive practice of lanscape architecture and historic preservation through sensory mappings and storytelling. Donal Rodney’s posthumous work Autoicon (1997-2000) uses digital archiving to explore the fragility of digital art amid technological obsolescence, raising critical questions about preserving marginalized histories in a digital age.

This research investigates the epistemological value of code as a medium in the context of criptech art. It explores how these multivalent art practices recalibrate the systems, tools, and techniques that shape the dissemination of technical knowledge. Additionally, it addresses alternative experiences of time, particularly ‘crip time,’ a flexible, non-linear concept related to disability. By examining the intersections of art, disability, and technology, the project advocates for a reevaluation of codes’ role—not merely as instruments of control but as catalysts for an aesthetic and politics of access.

 

 

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