[ exhibition ]
Time : All days, 08:00-21:00
Location : DOKK1, Hack Kampmanns Plads 2, 8000 Aarhus C
Artist : Nolan Lem
Supported by : Music Biennale Zagreb
Commisioned by : 33. MBZ
Info
Babbling Brook is a sonic meditation on the notion of “streams of consciousness” in an era where emerging technologies are poised to redefine what intelligence means. In this hyperreal, immersive environment, auditory information pools from concurrencies of thought as a sort of mechanical motion, blurring the boundaries between what can be simulated through sensory means.
Powered by AI, this mixed-media installation recreates the acoustic environment of a naturalistic “babbling brook” by kinetically activating dozens of mechanical keyboards that type out dialogue pertaining to the sound of water. Here, the keyboards “babble (on)” about the sound of water while inadvertently imitating or approximating the very sound they are describing, a process that connects the word babble with its onomatopoeic function. This exhibition touches on several trends in the contemporary world today beyond AI technology, such as linguistics, internet culture, ASMR, and distributed intelligence.
-
Nolan Lem (b. 1986) is an American artist and researcher living and working in Copenhagen, Denmark. His work navigates the intersections of sound, motion, and collective behaviors within large-scale interactive systems. Drawing from a wide array of materials, devices, and cultural objects, his practice creates immersive audio-visual environments that emerge from distributed networks of sonic machinery. Lem’s work has been featured internationally at venues such as the Museum of Modern Art Buenos Aires, Pioneer Works, L’HOSTE Art Contemporain, and the Danish National Museum of Music. Currently, he is a postdoctoral researcher at Chalmers University in Gothenburg, Sweden.
