The first part of the triptych refers to Robert Cahen’s video installation Tombe (avec les mots).

As in Cahen’s work, words fall down, but instead of a ready-made text, they are statements recognized in real time by an artificial intelligence system built into the browser.

The miniature transforms speech into a visual process—the recognized words “sink into the depths” in virtual space, subject to gravity and resistance, as if language had gained physical mass.

“The Depths”

The first part of “Triptych on the Weight of Words”, “Depths” refers to Robert Cahen’s video installation “Tombe (with the Mots)” from 2000. In the work, Cahen explores the dual meaning of the French word “tombe,” meaning both grave and falling. He also uses a vertically oriented screen displaying an animation of slowly falling words (as if in a dense medium). “Depths” echoes the general idea of ​​Cahen’s work, but employs an AI-based speech detection system built into web browsers to listen to what people within microphone range are saying and build a visual composition from recognized words and sentences, which are then assigned physical parameters using a physics engine typically used in computer games and various simulations.

“Triptych on the Weight of Words” combines three Miniatures into a larger whole that examines and plays with the titular issue, and is based on two sources of inspiration.

The first is the (meta?) metaphor of speaking about language, and particularly about words, which, when described, are given physical properties, especially weight and mass. Such metaphors are produced by both literature and everyday language (perhaps the tendency to carve words considered important into heavy, massive objects—tombstones, columns, monument pedestals, etc.—and other similar activities are also an emanation of the same phenomenon). Giving words physical attributes is a cross-cultural practice and gives the impression of a natural human predisposition that does not require special training, coming with the development of linguistic competence. The power of such a practice seems to correspond to the importance of the brain system of intuitive physics with which evolution has endowed humans (and with concepts of evolutionary aesthetics in general)—in this case, it would be a beautiful example of the culture-forming potential of the side effects of natural selection mechanisms. Falling and sinking words, subjected to gravity and the resistance of dense media in which this falling takes place, or simply encountering hard obstacles, anchor the reading process in the parameters of the physical world.

The second source of inspiration concerns the physical nature of information (and thus the “content” of language and words) and the mass/energy/information (M/E/I) equivalence hypothesis. According to the M/E/I hypothesis, information is a physical quantity that can be associated with the energy necessary to change or erase a single bit of information. In very simple terms, the hypothesis can be explained by invoking the so-called Landauer’s rule (a physical principle stating that erasing a single bit of information requires at least a certain minimum energy, which is proportional to the temperature of the system—erasing information therefore entails an increase in entropy, e.g., at room temperature, erasing a bit “costs” 3 x 10 to the power of -21 joules). Landauer’s rule determines the theoretical efficiency of every conceivable computer, but above all, it relates information to the energy values ​​required to change it. By employing a few more formulas from thermodynamics, Shannon’s information theory, and remembering the matter-energy equivalence rule (E = mc2), we can calculate the mass of a bit of information at room temperature (300°K, or 26.85°C), which is 3.19 x 10 to the power of -38 kg. This is not a large mass, and experimental confirmation (or refutation) of the mass/energy/information equivalence hypothesis is currently not possible. The M/E/I hypothesis is widely discussed among researchers exploring the intersection of physics and biology, for example, those attempting to define the characteristics of life—there are concepts that emphasize the exceptional energy efficiency of some life processes, approaching the barrier defined by Landauer. James Clerk Maxwell’s famous thought experiment (“Maxwell’s demon”), in its modern version, also expands on the demon’s task of acquiring and processing information about the world and the associated energy expenditure.