Gabrielle de Vietri

Gabrielle de Vietri

IMA at Ksubi

16 June–26 July 201216 Jun–26 Jul 2012

Melbourne artist Gabrielle de Vietri combed the Internet in search of CAPTCHAs, those meaningless passwords we type in to prove we are human. She collected dozens of them and wrote stories with them, which she presents as videos. We hear the artist read her tales as the corresponding CAPTCHAs are projected. CAPTCHA has four chapters, including an account of a journey to Medarkma and a steamy love story, with Desmodowe hankering for his beloved Siseelley. If you didn’t know that CAPTCHAs were used, you could easily imagine that the stories were written in jargon or using foreign-language terms. De Vietri’s CAPTCHA reveals how context, intonation, and background music can prompt us to read meaning into meaningless words.