Jenna Sutelanimiia cétiï, 2018
25 Nov 2020 - 31 Jan 2021
An audiovisual work by Jenna Sutela
nimiia cétiï, 2018 is an audiovisual work by Jenna Sutela using machine learning to generate a new written and spoken language. This language is based on the computer's interpretation of a Martian tongue from the late 1800s, originally channelled by the French medium Hélène Smith and now voiced by Sutela as well as the movement of Bacillus subtilis nattō, an extremophilic bacterium that, according to recent spaceflight experimentation, can survive on Mars. The machine, in this project, is a medium, channelling messages from entities that usually cannot speak. The work is also about intelligent machines as aliens of our creation. For her LAS intervention, Sutela invites visitors to the LAS website to listen in on the conversations in this extraterrestrial language.
Jenna Sutela
Jenna Sutela is a Finnish artist based in Berlin. She works with biological
and computational systems, including the human microbiome and artificial neural networks to create sculptures, images and music. Sutela’s work has been presented at museums and art contexts internationally, including CAC Genève (2024); Swiss Institute, New York (2023); Haus der Kunst, Munich (2022); Castello di Rivoli, Turin (2022); Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki (2022); Shanghai Biennale (2021); Liverpool Biennial (2021); Kunsthall Trondheim (2020); Serpentine Galleries, London (2019); and Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2019). She was a Visiting Artist at The MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST) in 2019-21.