Babelswarm
Description
Artist Statement
Activated by the voices of visitors in the real-world gallery and chat messaging from virtual visitors in Second Life, a swarm of letter cubes - programmed to seek out their original word position - slowly builds a morphing, virtual Tower of Babel. This tower is constructed from the utterances of visitors to it, constantly reconfiguring itself according to the artificial stupidity of the individual letter forms. What sorts of conceptual figures are available to think such a thing? The very old: the Tower of Babel from the Book of Genesis, which melds the frightening possibilities of technology, language, and power in a single startling image. And the very new: swarm intelligence as an ideal that expresses how innumerable different individuals can nonetheless come to produce radical innovations in excess of the powers of any one of them and in the midst of apparent disorder.
Babelswarm is a project that draws on the most traditional elements of religion, art, and literature, as it engages with the challenges of a scientific and technological age.
Source of Artist Statement
Activated by the voices of visitors in the real-world gallery and chat messaging from virtual visitors in Second Life, a swarm of letter cubes - programmed to seek out their original word position - slowly builds a morphing, virtual Tower of Babel. This tower is constructed from the utterances of visitors to it, constantly reconfiguring itself according to the artificial stupidity of the individual letter forms. What sorts of conceptual figures are available to think such a thing? The very old: the Tower of Babel from the Book of Genesis, which melds the frightening possibilities of technology, language, and power in a single startling image. And the very new: swarm intelligence as an ideal that expresses how innumerable different individuals can nonetheless come to produce radical innovations in excess of the powers of any one of them and in the midst of apparent disorder.
Babelswarm is a project that draws on the most traditional elements of religion, art, and literature, as it engages with the challenges of a scientific and technological age.
Source of Artist Statement
Creator
Nash, Adam
Clemens, Justin
Dodds, Christopher
Date
2008
Contributor
Dodds, Christopher
Rights
Copyright Adam Nash, Justin Clemens and Christopher Dodds . The copyright of images posted on the ADELTA Website belongs to third parties and is included on this website by permission from copyright holders. Apart from any use permitted by the Copyright Act 1968 (including fair dealing) the images may not be downloaded, adapted, remixed, printed, emailed, stored in a cache or otherwise reproduced without the written permission from the copyright holder.
Citation
Nash, Adam, Clemens, Justin, and Dodds, Christopher, “Babelswarm,” ADELTA, accessed April 28, 2024, http://adelta.westernsydney.edu.au/items/show/107.