The Data Dentata offers an elementary means of telecommunication. The user places his or her hand into an electromechanical device containing a binary switch that allows the user to transmit and receive one bit of information transmitted via digital modem to a symmetric arrangement at the other end of an ordinary telephone line. In this way, two users can hold hands at a distance. Legend has it that if a person tells a lie and inserts his or her hand into Rome's Bocca della Verita, it will bite off the offending appendage. The title of this installation borrows from this and other sources. In the contemporary world of computer-based art and telecommunications, this may be the last refuge for the hand of the artist.
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