Waking Helen
(Audio includes very high and low frequencies best heard on headphones or good speakers)

Waking Helen was commissioned to commemorate Richard Powers winning the 2006 National Book Award. In Powers' book Galatea 2.2, the possibility of computers acquiring language makes apparent the link between our use of language and consciousness and self-awareness. This video traces increasingly complex and nuanced ways of dealing with language:

crunching binary data

forming semantic networks

connecting language to other forms of data (still and moving images)

connecting language to human life, agency, and action

being led by language (e.g, by the distinction between the first- and second- person modes of address) to self-awareness accompanying existential concerns