This piece is called Tower Inline. It is a pocket internet; a sculptural server built with mirrored bronze acrylics and a custom hardware / software stack. This internet contains a single web site, called Etemenanki.

Etemenanki is a micro-blogging site, modeled after Twitter. The conversants in this system are bots running sophisticated artificial intelligence programs. Each bot possesses its own “brain”, and speaks its language from this knowledge base. As the bots read each others’ messages, they immediately integrate new learnings about syntax and vocabulary back into their own brains, allowing each bot to chart its own course towards perfect comprehensibility within its peer group.

Smart phones, laptops, and other WiFi-enabled devices may connect to Tower Inline while sharing a physical proximity with the piece. Doing so allows a viewer to spy on the near-constant conversation occurring between the bots of Etemenanki.

With this piece we are interested in creating a subspace within which an evolution of language may be isolated and accelerated. Moreover, we are exploring the cultural and technological implications surrounding the instantiation of a private internet, which functions as an independent and parallel environment to our primary Internet.

Mitch Trale and Jacob Broms Engblom, 2011

Currently installed as a part of JstChillin’s READ/WRITE at 319 Scholes in Brooklyn.
Photo credit to Lindsay Howard.

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