Zaleuco's CAPTCHA
It is clear from its title that the concept of the artwork is based on two fundamental elements:
the first is the acronym CAPTCHA which stands for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart, an audio video test employed in Information Technology to find out who is behind the real user, a human being or a computer. These kind of tests are largely utilized on the web with the aim of stopping every possible automatic programmes able to steal confidential information or do any spamming activities.
The second element is the code of laws written by Zaleuco di Locri (600 B.C.), considered as one of the first legislators of the West world, so well-advanced for that period of time to make people doubt about his own existence.
The software made for the artwork sets up the CAPTCHA tests by picking three words randomly into the ancient code of laws. This process is repeated every five seconds during of which the visitor may decode the indicated words so self-testing their own capability of being a human and eventually get into a preliminary pass key. The sentences coming out may sound meaningless but mostly are aimed to remark on specific nouns written by Zaleuco such as:
to alienate, property, slaves, senate, amends, death, trial, conciliation, trade, producers, thief, reform, law ; all subjects of our history that man has been trying to rule and understand for a thousand years and to which the artwork by Giovanni Longo also participates in.
Courtesy of Michele Lacopo for the technical support.
Comments 4
Say something