Alan Rath. Systems Logic
Three cathode-ray tubes, one showing a human mouth and two featuring a hand each, are connected through curvilinear wires that send electrical impulses like a central nervous system in Alan Rath’s Info Glut II (1997). Despite its synthetic quality, the sculpture’s form speaks to underlying similarities between human bodies and machines. Gesturing in American Sign Language messages like “batteries not included” and “objects in mirror are closer than they appear,” it mimics a sentient being overloaded with a litany of fragmented data. For the artist, electronic materials are basic elements of our everyday experience, which his sculptures embody in both form and content: “I am making a window on our world, a picture of what is ‘out there.’”1 Trained as an electrical engineer, he is interested not only in how technology facilitates a process but in the structure or logic of the system; here, electronics are the process and the object.2