Tauba Auerbach, Binary Uppercase/Lowercase, 2005

Clémence White: Auerbach is interested in linguistic systems and in translation. She's thinking about language and how language is used, but is also thinking about the characters of the alphabet. This piece, which is called Binary Uppercase/Lowercase translates the English alphabet into binary uppercase on the left side, and lowercase on the right side.

Narrator: Binary is the language of ones and zeroes that forms the basis of computer programming. Clémence White is a Curatorial Assistant at the Whitney.

Clémence White: Binary code for each letter in the English alphabet is eight bits long, so she translated that code using her system. Black squares correspond to ones, white squares correspond to zeroes for each letter.

The letter "A" in binary in uppercase is 01000001. She is translating ones as black squares and zeroes as white squares. So it's one white square, one black square, five white squares, and then one black square.