FREY painted this work in his Swiss emigration, in his signature light grey style, and gave it a title that seems at first sight to denote a date. The letters, numbers and words inscribed with a thick brush inside the body of the painting are image-making elements, with the composition emerging thanks to the random rhythm of the illegible textual fragments. The running text, which has no verbal meaning, only visual, was etched in the still wet surface with a brush. Frey, who from 1972 worked as a taxi and school bus driver in Zurich, took an interest in mathematics and computer art, and as he studied musical history, he discovered the interrelationship of music and arithmetic systems. His work is to be understood in the context of music, mathematics and automatic writing. His experiments with computers and the use of programming languages led him to a so-called stochastic art, one based on probability theory. The zeros and ones in the title of the work bring in mind the binary system, which is so important for computer science.
P. V.
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