Harm van den Berg
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Short Circuit
(2025)Sound installationIn Short Circuit, an artificial intelligence system is deconstructed by feeding it specific, complex prompts and jailbreak techniques. This pushes the AI beyond its capacity to produce coherent responses, causing it to "stumble" and reveal glimpses of its internal processes, exposing its architecture through sound.
The output consists of human-like sounds, generated using the system’s default male voice setting. Instead of comprehensible language, the AI produces bizarre, non-existent, language-like fragments, a kind of “speaking in tongues.” These suggest an intent to communicate, yet simultaneously fail to do so.
Much like the self-organizing patterns in nature that I explore through drawing and painting, these outputs emerge from iterative, hidden rules. Here, however, they no longer stabilize into form but shatter into unpredictable fragments.
Presented through a high-end speaker, this alien-sounding audio invites the question: Who or what are we truly inviting into our world through these technologies?
A total of 115 audio fragments were recorded in high quality to preserve their full character, including their harsh, lo-fi qualities, and are played randomly through a high-end speaker mounted on a stand.
Listen to an audio excerpt: