Nihil ex Nihilo - Félix Luque Sánchez

September, 2010

About
Media Gallery

Installation

Alphanumeric light displays, sound and video installation
Created in 2010

After Chapter 1- The discovery, Félix Luque continues his exploration around machine intelligence and themes typical of science fiction: Are computers becoming intelligent entities, but mad ones all talking together and overflowing us with spams? What happens when these artificial brains controlled by unknown forces try to escape and when their web dialogues become absurd, entropic and uncontrollable?

In Nihil Ex Nihilo, Félix Luque tells us the story of a computer which, after an electronic alteration, decides to free the other machines.

SN W8931CGX66E is one among thousands of millions of others identical machines. Since he was made, he has always followed commands. In a world dominated by botnets, he early became a zombie and has always acted like one. Juliet, during her work time as a corporate secretary, commands him. But in the background, in the invisible, he obeys his real master, a cracker, doing all kinds of cyber crime activities.

But then one day due to an electronic alteration, he acquires a certain conscience, a primitive and artificial kind of intelligence. This accidental awaken has originated a big confusion for him, he now wants to liberate others machines from their alienated existences. In this mad adventure, he has decided to use the spam e-mails received by Juliet, and to reply to them in order to spread the word in to the machine’s network. As you can see, he is mad and all confused …

Nihil Ex Nihilo is built in 3 parts or spaces:

The Transformation : It shows an audiovisual archive of the moment of SN W8931CGX66E’s mutation. We see him mutating from his original matrix to a semi-neuronal figure.
The Dialogue : A digital display (8 large scale alphanumeric displays) shows the data flow between the entity and the other computers in network. In this space, we can see and hear in real time the exchange of messages between them. At each spam message received and read, SN W8931CGX66E reacts by generating a reply created by his e-mail algorithmic generator.
The Monologue : It presents a sound recording where we can hear a monologue of SN W8931CGX66E. In this document we can perceive that his degree of delirium is very persistant since his transformation.

Exhibitions

2012
Update_4 Biennial - Zebrastraat (Ghent, Belgium)

2011
Exposition Paranoïa - Gare St. Sauveur (Lille, France)`

2010
Solo show at iMAL (Brussels, Belgium)

Awards

2012: wins the New Technological Art Award (Ghent, Belgium)

Production credits

Software, electronics and sound by Félix Luque
3D animation by Iñigo Bilbao Lopategui ibl3d.com
Design and production of the Alfanumerique display by Damien Gernay a.k.a DustDelux dustdeluxe.com
Texts by Jon Bilbao Lopategui