knowns

At the exhibition from September 1, 2018 to June 2, 2019

The core of »knowns« is a computer program that counts in natural numbers and gives each of them a unique name (e.g., A for 0, B for 1, Z for 25 and Aa for 26, Ab for 27, etc.) The program displays a seemingly endless list of names and highlights each name included in the 140,000 international human names database that is collected by the artist. As a principle, every name – not just of people alive, but also people who have lived and people who will live – will be shown on the screen just once: there are no exceptions.

Assuming that the program counts 60 natural numbers per second, »Alexander,« the 307,039,224,483rd name, will be shown in 162 years’ time. The program continues to count as long as it is running. Eventually, the number will reach the limit of the capacity of 64-bits data type: there will be data overflow and the program will crash. This could happen about 13 billion years after the program was started.