Simon Starling
D1-Z1 (22,686,575:1), 2009

Artist
Simon Starling

Title
D1-Z1 (22,686,575:1)

Year of creation
2009

Technology and duration
35 mm film looped, film projector D1

Year of acquisition
2010

Acquisition of the foundation

The abbreviation Z1 in the title of Starling's work refers to the first freely programmable computer, which was designed in 1936 by the engineer and artist Konrad Zuse (1910-1995). With 172 bytes of storage capacity and the ability to add, subtract, multiply and divide, the Z1 was privately financed and built by Zuse in his Berlin apartment. Completed in 1938, the computer was programmed with a punched tape that Zuse made from regular 35 mm photo film strip.

Starling's film, in turn, was animated using the latest computer animation technology and with the help of a surface rendering program also developed in Berlin. Calculating this 30 second sequence showing the paper tape reader (a small part of the huge machine) required 3,992,837,240 bytes of storage, over 22 million times the storage capacity of the Z1. This computer-generated virtual reconstruction was then transferred back to 35mm film. The film is shown on the D1 projector, designed in Dresden in the middle of the last century. The title of the work therefore names the type of computer and the name of the projector on which Starling presents the film.