from PRAYERS. Intervention with computer, electronic circuitry and smoke machine. 1999. Dimensions: variable.

Throughout the day, a computer interface captures all the keystrokes typed on another computer within the same building. In real time, this raw data is translated to Morse code and broadcast into the surrounding atmosphere in the form of Morse-encoded smoke signals issuing from a vent or other opening in the building as longer and shorter puffs of smoke. More and less active at various times of the day and its output more and less visible under varying conditions, the apparatus is a kind of exhaust system for the machine of daily industry. At the same time, it relates today's electronic communications to previous technological and communications revolutions: telegraph, binary languages, steam power, smoke signals. Everyday hopes and fleeting desires, channelled through the implements of daily work, are briefly given form as they are dispersed into the world at large, on the wing of a prayer.