Morsealphabet

»Only few artists were in a position to comprehend this challenge posed by technical media and their impact for classic art media. Brigitte Kowanz is one of the few artists who were able to do so. By forming words and codes with artificial light and fluorescent tubes, she writes with light. […] Her light writing is consequently not an illustration of sensual natural reality like in the medium of photography; her light writing is a concept writing (ideography) instead, i.e., a code. In order to more or less emphatically call the attention of the art public to this significant break with the tradition of the pictorial code, she employs the exemplary code per se, namely Morse Code. There are three Morse characters: short signal, long signal and interval. These characters are transmittable as sound or radio signals, as an electrical impulse by means of a pushbutton through interruption of a constant signal via a telephone line as well as optically with the switching on and off of longer light signals. Morse Code consists of standardised sequences of short and long signals called dots and dashes. […] Morse Code is the first code of electromagnetic space or disembodied virtual space, respectively. Light is immaterial and an electromagnetic wave.«[1]

[1] Peter Weibel, »Botschaftlerin des Lichts / Messenger of Light,« in: Christina Steinle (ed.), »Brigitte Kowanz. Infinity and Beyond«, Hatje Cantz, Berlin, 2017, pp. 201–226.