Brian Hewitt

Artist's rendering of the installation, "U+1202D", 2011

U+1202D, 2011
The title is the Unicode value for the cuneiform symbol “An”, which can alternatively mean god/goddess (typically the progenitor god) or sky/heaven.

“May the known and unknown god be pacified!
May the known and unknown goddess be pacified!
The sin which I have committed I know not.”

The above text is an excerpt of the translated text of a desperate Sumerian prayer to unknown gods or godesses, found on a tablet dating from approximately 700 BC (although the prayer itself may be much older). The prayer will be posted to a Twitter feed, which will then be displayed on a monitor (or projection), along with other “tweets” matching the search criteria “pray to god”. Using computer text to-speech tools, this display is read and the audio is fed to a low power (FCC compliant) radio transmitter, which nearby visitors can tune in to.

The installation also includes back-lit glass photographic plates from an Australian observatory sky survey, which are filled with literally millions of stars.

This is a new work, so no installation photographs or videos are available. A photoshop rendering of the installation is shown here.

Brian Hewitt’s portfolio website ::  http://www.brianhewitt.net/