Glitch in a Garden of Whispers explores the interplay between artificial intelligence (AI) and art. The exhibition by the Gallery Association of Berlin (LVBG) features works by Ana María Caballero and Nicole L’Huillier that deal with language, translation and hearing. The idea of the 'seed' is the conceptual starting point: just as seeds are the starting point for growth, words contain hidden worlds that awaken impulses. The exhibition space is conceived as a garden in which seeds encounter suitable conditions and new possibilities grow. In AI systems, a seed determines how randomness unfolds within huge parameter spaces. At the same time, the garden can be read as a space of translation in which a genetic code transforms into colour and scent. Just as translation interprets language, the garden mutates and reacts, creating a text composed in concert.
La Becque © Emilien Itim
Nicole L'Huillier explores poetry as a performative form in which words grow and mutate through human-machine collaboration. Her work Cuchicheos (2022) performs continuous translations through membranous operations that blur the boundaries between categories. The installation consists of a long banner of interconnected membranes that falls to the floor like a rubbery sound system. Each membrane serves as a loudspeaker, pouring sounds into the space. The sound is based on Gabriela Mistral's poem La Contadora (The Storyteller), translated by Ursula K. Le Guin. This creates a south-north dialogue that combines science fiction and poetry. L'Huillier processes the poem with learning algorithms that respond with foreign sounds and open up new meanings in whispers and noises. In addition, two bird-like objects create an AI-controlled soundscape that combines ancient whistling vessels, earthquake vibrations, flowing water and visitors' voices into a transformable archive.
Cuchicheos , Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, 2022 © Nicole L'Huillier
Ana María Caballero reinterprets Jorge Luis Borges' Book of Imaginary Beings through AI-generated images into In Being Borges (2023). In the twelve-part series, she uses AI to translate Borges' Spanish text, the English translation and her own interpretation into images. In doing so, she reveals how AI interprets language and uncovers biases in data sets. The images are combined with Caballero's own poems, which refer to other literary works and prompt thoughts on intertextuality – such as her homage to Alicia Ostriker's Demeter to Persephone. Caballero's work explores the relationship between sign and meaning, precision and ambiguity.
The Double © Ana María Caballero
The works in the exhibition Glitch in a Garden of Whispers refer to various authors who grow together through modes of translation – a central theme for the functioning of AI. Ursula K. Le Guin understood translation as cultural observation: as listening across otherness. Jorge Luis Borges seems to have anticipated AI in his story The Garden of Forking Paths (1941) by writing a story that contains all possible stories at once. Each AI generation in the exhibition represents only one path through a garden of multiple branching possibilities. AI translations are never neutral; just as seeds fall on soil or whispers fall on ears, AI encounters language and creates an interpretation from countless possibilities.
The Elephant that Foretold the Birth of the Buddha © Ana María Caballero
Project Sponsored by the Senate Department for Economic Affairs, Energy and Public Enterprises and supported by the Gallery Association of Berlin (LVBG)
