S. W. L. S. is a video installation consisting of two parallel monitors depicting on one screen a cloud of points being highlighted an on the other a text being written on real time.The cloud is a two-dimensional representation of a multidimensional dictionary of all the terms used in the complete texts by Nietzsche. His works were previously analyzed by a Long Short Term Memory (LSTM) neural network in order to find the semantic relationships in his vocabulary.

A series of algorithms then navigates the cloud/dictionary and send words to the second screen in order to construct sentences, paragraphs. The result is pseudo-poetic pseudo-philosophic texts that adopt, or in wider sense, absorb Nietzsche’s style/intention. The whole process is illustrated on a super slowed down timescale so a human spectator has enough time to correlate the “train of thoughts” of the computer with what then the computer writes. Whenever the paragraph is over, the cloud is restarted and a new algorithm starts from the beginning.

This didactic dissection of an artificial brain brings to relevance the value of language (logos) in the construction of a system of thoughts and of communication. Are we ignoring the machine’s discourse because it appears incoherent or because we are not willing/capable to comprehend it under our own logics?