Collection Cards: STEM
The images and shapes in Book of Windows are from the past and present. Which ones look old-fashioned? Do any look modern?
Saul Chernick made this picture look like a computer screen that has many computer “windows” open at once. The windows all have different kinds of frames. Chernick’s image brings our attention to the words we use to describe technology, such as “window,” “toolbar,” and “drop-down menu.” These words mean one thing when they are used with computers and another when they are not. For example, how is a window in a computer different from one in a house?
Think about different words used to describe computers or other kinds of technology. Why do you think a computer mouse is called a mouse?
Past Presence
Artist Saul Chernick incorporates imagery drawn from woodcuts created in 15th- and 16th-century Northern Europe, along with aspects of the visual languages of 20th-century computing. In Chernick’s own words, this work seeks to “merge the conventional idea of an icon as a representation of the sacred, with the modern day, technological conception as an image that represents a specific file, directory, window, option, or program.”
Past Presence
Artist Saul Chernick incorporates imagery drawn from woodcuts created in 15th- and 16th-century Northern Europe, along with aspects of the visual languages of 20th-century computing. In Chernick’s own words, this work seeks to “merge the conventional idea of an icon as a representation of the sacred, with the modern day, technological conception as an image that represents a specific file, directory, window, option, or program.”
Cryptograph: An Exhibition for Alan Turing
In these works, Saul Chernick considers the impermanence and mutability of meanings that are invested in icons and symbols. He incorporates imagery drawn from woodcuts created in 15th- and 16thcentury Northern Europe, along with aspects of the visual languages of computing. In Chernick’s own words, these images seek to “merge the conventional idea of an icon as a representation of the sacred, with the modern-day, technological conception as an image that represents a specific file, directory, window, option, or program.” Through his juxtaposition of these two forms of visual communication, the artist reveals each as a cryptic system whose significance is determined, in part, by the experiences of its viewers and its participation in a broader web of meanings.
Chernick suggests that the iconography of computing as we know it, with its windows, toolbars, and drop-down menus, will someday fall into obscurity, just as the symbolic implications of Renaissance imagery have become confused with time. However, by juxtaposing these visual means of transmitting information, the artist also foregrounds formal and conceptual continuities that seem to bridge temporal boundaries that separate past from present. Thus, Book of Windows and Pangea demonstrate the compelling allure and weight of symbols, even in the absence of their original contexts.
Exhibition Label:
"Cryptograph: An Exhibition for Alan Turing," Mar-2012, Stephen Goddard
In these works, Saul Chernick considers the impermanence and mutability of meanings that are invested in icons and symbols. He incorporates imagery drawn from woodcuts created in 15th- and 16th-century Northern Europe, along with aspects of the visual languages of computing. In Chernick’s own
words, these images seek to “merge the conventional idea of 16 an icon as a representation of the sacred, with the modernday, technological conception as an image that represents a specific file, directory, window, option, or program.” Through his juxtaposition of these two forms of visual
communication, the artist reveals each as a cryptic system whose significance is determined, in part, by the experiences of its viewers and its participation in a broader web of meanings.
Chernick suggests that the iconography of computing, as we know it, with its windows, toolbars, and drop-down menus,
will someday fall into obscurity, just as the symbolic implications of Renaissance imagery have become confused with time. However, by juxtaposing these visual means of transmitting information, the artist also foregrounds formal
and conceptual continuities that seem to bridge temporal boundaries that separate past from present. Thus, Book of Windows and Pangea demonstrate the compelling allure and
weight of symbols, even in the absence of their original contexts. CFK © 2012 Conner Family Trust, San Francisco / Artists Rights
Society (ARS), New York
