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The first part of the triptych refers to Robert Cahen’s video installation Tombe (avec les mots).
As in Cahen’s work, words fall down, but instead of a ready-made text, they are statements recognized in real time by an artificial intelligence system built into the browser.
The miniature transforms speech into a visual process—the recognized words “sink into the depths” in virtual space, subject to gravity and resistance, as if language had gained physical mass.
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The first part of Triptych on the Weight of Words, The Depths, refers to Robert Cahen’s video installation Tombe (avec les mots) from 2000. In the work, Cahen explores the dual meaning of the French word “tombe,” meaning both grave and falling. He also uses a vertically oriented screen displaying an animation of slowly falling words (as if in a dense medium).
The Depths echoes the general idea of Cahen’s work, but employs an AI-based speech detection system built into web browsers to listen to what people within microphone range are saying and build a visual composition from recognized words and sentences, which are then assigned physical parameters using a physics engine typically used in computer games and various simulations.