Nihil Ex Nihilo (meaning nothing comes from nothing) is a science fiction installation from Félix Luque, part of the Brussels-based OtherSounds, which was exhibited at the iMAL Center for Digital Culture and Technology earlier this month. The narrative follows a secretary’s machine, SN W8931CGX66E, that is secretly controlled by a hacker who uses it to commit cybercrime. One day the machine gains a primitive form of consciousness and decides it wants to awaken its fellow machines from their submissive slumber by replying to the spam emails it receives through the secretary. In the process, it goes insane, a bit like HAL 9000 but infected with the unsolicited crap from spam emails. It’s a strange and mysterious piece that abstracts the technology we interact with everyday, while looking at the possibility of boredom and madness arising in artificial intelligence.
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