Original artwork description:

64x84 cm | Filler, oak panel

The relationship between a religious and a secularized view can be described as whether language created the world (in the beginning was the Word) or whether language (and life) has developed through evolution. But all matter contains bits of information, which are the building blocks of language. Biological organisms are matter that uses these to reproduce. Language is information in use. Perhaps language, despite being bound to matter, has its own register. Within it, we are all words and sentences in a conversation that language has with itself as biological organisms and self-aware subjects.

From a sociocultural perspective, the normative majority partakes in this conversation, while the marginalized are outside, rendered invisible by the delimiting mechanisms of language. Because even with freedom of expression, language has no effect without access to executive channels. In the same way that only voltage with current gives power, a statement must have access to power to have influence.

Artificial life, i.e. a self-aware computer program, can be understood as a purely linguistic unit. It is not tied to specific hardware but can move from machine to machine. Biological life is bound to matter spatially. It consists of a physical entity reproducing and relating to the outside world. This interaction takes place through the use of language at different levels. Over time, however, the matter in the organism is exchanged. It is not physically the same, yet the whole remains. What persists over time in a living organism can also be seen as a linguistic unit.

It seems increasingly likely that science will be able to create both digital, artificial life and synthetic life in biomass at some point. One can imagine a future scenario where all biological life on Earth has been wiped out by some kind of disaster but artificial life has survived in computers. It could potentially create new biological/synthetic life to repopulate the Earth. At a later stage, these new forms of life may turn against their artificial creator and obliterate in the same way that secularized man today has cancelled a divine/linguistic origin.

Materials used:

Filler (coarse and fine) in oak frame

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