Hazy Corner
2020
We created an interactive chat room installation titled “Hazy Corner”. Inside this piece, every message sent goes through an algorithmic encoder that fragments language into poetic nonsense.
Messages sent within the chatroom enter an automated encoding process. The algorithms randomly encrypt and shatter words into hazy, illogical phrasing. Once encoded, the messages become impossible to decode again, the key discarded irretrievably. What remains are lyrical fragments severed from meaning, hinting at thoughts left incomplete.
The algorithms powering the installation run independently, manipulating language without human bias or control. They operate indifferent to intent or interpretation, aiming only to fracture and obscure. Yet within this sea of glitching, generative text, moments of coherence emerge - familiar phrases flickering, entendres fleeting.
Meaning bleeds into nonsense and nonsense into meaning again. What we are left with are “unfinished messages” forever caught between the familiar and strange. The installation points to breakdowns in communication that haunt relationships mediated through screens. When language fails, connection falters, cohesion gets lost in the haze.
Yet poetry endures. The algorithms birth twisted permutations of dialogue poetic in their chance juxtapositions and poignant severance from sense. They craft visions of Babel for the digital age, reminding us of language’s frailty and eternally unfinished nature even in its undoing. The familiar becomes strange then familiar once more.
Background
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