Disambiguation (2004 (2011)) is a programmed 3D environment, projected onto a large plexiglass screen, in which complex semantic processes are experienced in real time. A multitude of slowly moving news headlines forms the textual space, a vast sign system circumscribed by a set of formal and algorithmic rules setting the stage for serious word play.
In the field of computational linguistics, word-sense disambiguation is an analytical task in natural language processing used to reduce the ambiguity and inevitable plurality of meaning of each word in a given sentence. A series of algorithms attempt to isolate “the” meaning, or the specific intention of a particular usage within the context of a singular phrase.
In the work Disambiguation, each word, on the contrary, explores all of its polysemic potential. A word’s current position in a phrase is always temporary, briefly revealing but one aspect of its ability to generate meaning. At any given moment, a word or word group can detach itself from a phrase, traverse space and incorporate itself into another, all the while conforming to correct grammatical, morphological and syntactic rules in accord with the aforementioned grammatical analysis. Each new text formed thus maintains and permutates upon its original underlying structure, allowing for meaning to constantly proliferate and shift.
Over time, the deliberately factual or “neutral” wordings of the dispatches, conceived of as simple statements or vessels carrying information, open up to all their latent indeterminateness, and to a conception of language as a material process, a continuous play of signifiers.
This work benefited from a grant by Le Departement des Arts Plastiques de la Direction des Affaires Culturelles de la Ville de Paris
Exhibitions
- La Criée Centre d’Art Contemporain, Rennes, France, 2011
- l’Ecole Supérieure des Beaux Arts de Marseille, 2009
- A House in 4 dimensions, Filmmuseum, Amsterdam, Pays Bas, 2004
- Espace Multimédia Gantner, Bourogne, France, 2004
Collections
- Espace Multimédia Gantner, Bourogne, France
