"Rosetta"

Acrylic on Wood, 5“ x 14.5”, 2009.




Two steganographic codes, one ultilising a sculptural and one a painterly ciphertext, create a three way harmony with the encrypted data. Expressing code not solely as something visual, but also something tactile.

Edward Alonzo, Artist, University of Vermont
Burlington, Vermont

"My current avenue of investigation is Steganography and the place of Cryptography in our society.  Encryption has become incredibly powerful and equally incredibly common place.

The hidden nature of steganography is because either the cryptographer decides to do it, or in the more common case of "https" because the user is ignorant of it's existence.  The ignorance in the second case is due to the overwhelming complexity of computers and computations done by them.  Which is akin to the overwhelming complexity of art and decisions made by artists.  Both Computers and Art are incredibly common in our culture and yet both are incredibly overwhelming to many of the people who see them daily.  Thus, stenographic painting seems the aesthetic equivalent to 'https'.

To that extent, the focus has been on devising encoding systems that utilize color and orientation, and then finessing them to make them sing together."