Dexter Sinister

"How to design (multiples)... Multiples are designed using research methods. Unlike the artist, the designer doesn't create a wonderful sketch or an idea and then find a reproduction technique. The designer experiments with optical, physical, geometric, typological, and mechanical phenomena. They refine the elements of communication and search for suitable materials to produce an object with the highest level of visual communication at the lowest cost. They find the technical and mechanical solution that best aligns with their proposal, and in the end, a prototype is born. Not a unique and original artistic creation but a model for mass production. Reproductions of artworks are always inferior to the original, but when creating a prototype for mass production, the prototype will always be inferior to the final product." (from Codice Ovvio, Bruno Munari, 1971)

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Dexter Sinister presents the second in a series of 3 exhibitions by COLLI that trace the research work of Bruno Munari. On the occasion of this exhibition, "How to design (multiples)," Dexter Sinister presents the multiple "The Last Shot Clock," an electronic clock with an idiosyncratic timer originally produced for La Biennale di Venezia 2013 and subsequently reissued for a series of exhibitions and performances over the past five years. This exhibition, which continues the first project "Meet The Tetracono," presented in June 2017, will include a collection of historical and rare materials by Bruno Munari along with the works of Dexter Sinister.

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In the first intervention, presented at the Venice Biennale in the Lithuanian and Cypriot Pavilion, the clock was programmed with customized microchips to alter the display of two basketball scoreboards. The following prototype was produced a year later, in 2014, as an LED that transmitted a message during the "work in progress" exhibition at the Contemporary Art Center in Vilnius, Lithuania. Two clocks were then hung in the museum's courtyard as instruments to mark the timing of Dexter Sinister's performance. In 2015, the LED clocks were included in "I'll be your interface," an exhibition by Dexter Sinister at the Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. Then, in 2015, the two LED clocks were part of the "on Universal Serial Bus" exhibition at the Kunstverein in Munich, set up in a manner reminiscent of the initial installation in Vilnius. The next version of the clock was produced as software included in "Universal Serial Bus," a digital collection of Dexter Sinister's works published on a memory stick by Sternberg Press in Berlin. The new work for the current exhibition consists of a small electronic display with 4-digit, 7-segment, produced as a multiple.

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The Last Shot Clock (multiple) uses a limited alphabet of only two characters, "0" and "o," to count down from 15 to 0, using a binary system. Binary is the default language of computers where digits have only two possible values, either "on" or "off" ("0" or "1," "O" or "o"). In the typical base-10 counting, the number thirteen uses the positions of its two digits to produce a total. "13" in base-10 means "1 ten" plus "3." Thirteen in the binary system, or base 2, is represented by "1011" and composed of "1 eight" plus "0 four" plus "1 two" plus "1 zero." In the language of The Last Shot Clock, thirteen is "OoOO."