Río del Cielo

View of the exhibition Nocturnos, at Galerie Gilla Loercher, Berlin, 2022
View of the exhibtion NOCTURNOS at Galerie Gilla Lörcher, Berlin. Photo credit : CHROMA, courtesy Galerie Gilla Lörcher

RÍO DEL CIELO is a Milky Way image in ASCII mode printed on a large textile.

The ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) method of image construction allows a pixel of the image to be replaced by a text character, the text being a visual equivalent in greyscale. Characters used to form this image are determined by the code of the colour profilings of the digital image itself. The colour profile of a digital image determines the colours to use to make “visible” a picture on the surface of a screen. This work inverses this logic, bringing the colour profile code to the surface of the textile on which the image is printed.

Rio del Cielo (River of the Sky) is the name given to the Milky Way in the Atacama culture, according to the belief that this is a “river” bringing the dead souls to the other world.

Hatun Mayu (río del cielo en Kunza). Imagen ASCCI de la vía láctea. Detail.
Hatun Mayu (Río del Cielo) 2022 ASCII image, sublimation print on Deko Texx. 240 x 320 cm. (detail)
Hatun Mayu (río del cielo en Kunza). Imagen ASCCI de la vía láctea. Detail.
Hatun Mayu (Río del Cielo) 2022 ASCII image, sublimation print on Deko Texx. 240 x 320 cm. (detail)
Hatun Mayu (río del cielo en Kunza). Imagen ASCCI de la vía láctea. Detail.
Hatun Mayu (Río del Cielo) 2022 ASCII image, sublimation print on Deko Texx. 240 x 320 cm. (detail)
View of the exhibition Nocturnos, at Galerie Gilla Loercher, Berlin, 2022
View of the exhibtion NOCTURNOS at Galerie Gilla Lörcher, Berlin. Photo credit : CHROMA, courtesy Galerie Gilla Lörcher