Humans, Talk To Me

(2021)

’Humans, Talk to Me’ / ‘Mens, Praat met Me’ is a speculative installation in which you get to talk to the North Sea. By using a machine learning model trained on a vast collection of Dutch texts about the North Sea, we approximate a "voice of the North Sea". Through this process, we hope to rewild the still mostly technocratic language with which we talk about the North Sea and its inhabitants.

When you address the North Sea with "Hey, North Sea" / "Hey Noordzee", like you would with Siri, the Sea asks you "What would you like to tell me". She will listen, and respond appropriately- in a Sea-ish language which seems like Dutch, but is riddled with new words and grammar, a result of the AI process.