It takes drivers only a fraction of a moment, as they race through the flow of traffic on Theodor-Heuss-Allee and past the Sparkassen Informatik site, to recognize something long familiar. Capturing their fleeting glances is the figure of a small toy, a little horse, the limbs of which begin to move when one pushes against the underside of its pedestal. From thumb-sized dimensions, however, it has been rescaled here to six metres tall: an equestrian statue of a
different breed.
Equestrian statues, once popular means of self-portrayal among rulers in the 17th century, symbolize power. As a living throne, the steed conferred its dynamics, beauty, and power upon the rider. The portrayal conveys the taming of animality, the mastery of matter, and the epitome of competent leadership. The SI, in front of which the riderless horse stands, defines itself in terms of service. It deals with money and personal data, or more exactly: with reliable information processing and secure data transfer, and thus with sensitive and highly abstract affairs.
Data traffic was originally personified by a mounted messenger who put his life on the line to deliver a dispatch to the correct recipient – and he did live dangerously. He could be intercepted, or could arrive too late. A piece of bad news could cost him his life. Everything depended upon his stamina, his intelligence, and his integrity.
In the course of our investigations into the history of data transmission we came across an episode that graphically illustrates the simultaneity of analogue and electronic or digital worlds. When the first electromagnetic telegraph line was built from coast to coast in Australia in the 19th century, mounted messengers bridged the final stretch through inaccessible terrain until the eastern and western cables could be joined. „Morse by horse!“ the headlines declared. The mounted messenger closed the gap in the process of advancing technological growth. He was the service provider, the little cog in the wheel, or in the jargon of the digital age: the junction in the network of communication.
As a second element of Morse by Horse two large signal lamps come into play. They tower above the pedestrian traffic on masts almost ten metres tall. One stands inside the hall, the second on the forecourt on a diagonal axis to the first, thus creating a connection between interior and exterior. The lamps communicate with each other through light signals sent in Morse code, and both are transmitters as well as receivers. The signals are reduced to the essentials: on/off, light/dark, 1/0.
Samuel Morse, who was actually a fine-art painter by profession, transferred our alphabet into a code that can be translated into electromagnetic impulses, but also into sound or light signals. He built the first Morse device in the mid-19th century out of wire, scrap metal, and his wall clock. Fascinated by the idea of a universal character code and worldwide communication, he developed the code not as a secret language, but openly and easily learnable. Correspondingly, the key to the code is also provided here at the installation site. The Morse alphabet and its translation into alphanumeric characters can be found engraved on the stainless steel plates in which both signal lamps are mounted. The interested observer could learn the Morse code at any time, and decode the lamps‘ messages. This would also be entertaining, because they are telling each other jokes.
The joke is an elementary form of communication. It plays with the unexpected, breaks through the grid of the usual, and depends upon surprise. The joke functions within dialog. Its humour relies for activation upon its recipient‘s interpretive powers. According to the cultural philosopher Henri Bergson, laughter is a reaction to stiffening among the living, and in the end it always has a social function. There may be punch-lines that one does not understand, but when it comes right down to it, there is hardly anything that brings people together as much as shared laughter.
Why a toy? Why a language game? Without the desire and ability to play, whole sectors of culture would not have developed. Innovation arises from an abundance of the creative. To Homo Ludens belongs the world, which he playfully creates.
[from http://www.workworkwork.de/pdfs/morsebyhorse.pdf]
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