LB°24 Participants

Ulrica Beritsdotter

Lost in Translation, Ulrica Beritsdotter. Luleåbiennalen 2013.

Ulrica Beritsdotter (b. 1967, Sweden) is an artist based in Sweden.

My work for the 2013 X-border Art Biennial is based on the Arecibo message, a radio message which was broadcast into outer space in 1974, beamed toward the star cluster M13 some 25,000 light years away. It consisted of 1,679 binary digits (1s and 0s) and was written by Dr Frank Drake together with Carl Sagan among others. An intelligent being striving to decipher the message, it is hoped, would eventually recognise that 1,679 is a multiple of two prime numbers: 23 and 73; based on the assumption that the fundamental properties of numbers – binary and prime numbers in particular – are the same everywhere. The art piece consists of these 1s and 0s mounted on a wall according to the prime number sequence of 23 by 73. Each of the 1,679 digits is crafted individually with charcoal, tar and wax on handmade acid-free paper.

Ulrica Beritsdotter lives and works in Luleå, North Sweden. She studied sculpture and spatial arts in Sweden and Holland. After fourteen years in Holland, she returned to her birthplace, Luleå, a couple of years ago. The “arctic” influences have always been strong in her art, and although trained as a sculptor, most of her current works are two-dimensional. The “poetry of the materials” is the dominant factor in her art.

Work

Lost in Translation, 1679 digits, 7x7 cm each spaced by 0.5 cm, 540x173 cm. Charcoal, tar, wax, handmade acid-free paper.

Location

Rovaniemi