33 Questions Per Minute. Relational Architecture 5 /// 2001 /// LED Installation /// Raphael Lozano-Hemmer
The visitors ask the questions and the computer provides the answers. The visitor can enter questions himself by the keyboard, which then appear on the divided screen. The visitors navigate through the endless night of characters. There are as many billions of stars as there are questions. The user of the machine (the keyboard with the alphabet, twenty six characters) compiles chains of characters. The computer and its program answer with other chains of characters. With the help of the computer, the user generates his own chains of characters (star signs) in the sea of characters. The computer program, which is behind the work 33 Questions Per Minute, uses grammatical rules in order to combine terms from the dictionary. It automatically generates 55 billion random questions at a speed of “33 questions per minute”. Here, the program avoids asking the same questions even though it would still take 3000 years to generate all conceivable word combinations.
Raphael Lozano-Hemmer (*1967 in Mexico City), 1989 B.Sc. in physical chemistry at the Concordia University in Montréal, Canada. As electronic artist, he developed a large-format interactive installation in a public space which frequently uses new technologies and specially designed physical interfaces.
