exonemo: 0 to 1 / 1 to 0
Feb 6–Nov 18, 2019
exonemo, screenshot of 0 to 1 / 1 to 0 at sunrise, 2019
In their project 0 to 1 / 1 to 0, the artist team exonemo uses the passage between night and day to explore the digital and natural environments we inhabit. Every day at sunrise and sunset, webpages viewed on whitney.org slowly recede into the browser window to reveal a laptop screen, and beyond that, the rising or setting sun over Manhattan. The webpage is still functional in its minimized state, but the doubling of the screen draws attention to the hardware through which users experience the website. In the natural world, the two- to three-minute change between night and day marks a powerful yet gradual transition that has no equivalent in the digital space, where the switch between the binary code of 0s and 1s is discontinuous. exonemo's project turns these daily moments into a transition between both the digital and natural environments, contrasting the interconnectedness of the digital and natural world with their fundamental differences.
The Japanese artist duo exonemo creates experimental projects that explore the paradoxes of the digital and analog environments surrounding us. Formed by Kensuke Sembo and Yae Akaiwa in 1996, exonemo’s works have been exhibited in group and solo exhibitions worldwide. In 2006, their project The Road Movie won the Golden Nica in the Net Vision category of the Prix Ars Electronica in 2006. Since 2012 they have organized the "Internet Yami-Ichi," a large flea market that has taken place in Tokyo and New York and which makes the often immaterial flotsam of cyberspace tangible in online-themed objects. The artists have lived and work in New York since 2015.
Sunrise/Sunset was a series of Internet art projects that marked sunset and sunrise in New York City every day from 2009 to 2024. All were commissioned by the Whitney specifically for whitney.org, each project unfolding over a time frame of ten to thirty seconds.
Indicating the switch from day to night and vice versa in one specific location, Sunrise/Sunset projects played with the perception of time and space, underscoring the physical location of the Whitney Museum and the global accessibility of virtual space. The series was organized by Christiane Paul, Curator of Digital Art at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
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