Malhotra’s coding puts the binary of human and natural systems at stake because of the illegitimate permanent status man thrives to assert. How can the ebb and flow of natural elements be translated? Experiencing their unique ebb and flow is only possible to humans at a minute scale in the great picture of time and understanding nature’s language, questions what coding systems are humans using and what can we make of the slippage that occurs during these translating processes. In this slippage, a space for the appreciation of the natural systems is created by Ian’s labour-intensive works, which in human time scale can be posited as a creation of the artist’s own time zone. 

 

Using human and machine systems par excellence as the Morse code and bit encoding, Ian Malhotra works on small scale erosion of the natural world, as if he is trying to combine a critic of experiencing nature by proxy and the exacerbation of cognitive sensations by having these codes enabling a sensorial clash, a mistranslation that allows the viewer to experience a thwarted temporality.