nimiia cétiï, 2018 

digital video, colour, sound 

duration: 12:06 minutes 

Created in collaboration with Memo Akten and Damien Henry as part of Google Arts & Culture’s artist-in-residence program n-Dimensions 

Courtesy the artist 

Presentation at the 23rd Biennale of Sydney was made possible with generous support from the Goethe-Institut Australia 

Finnish artist Jenna Sutela works with language, sound, technology and living materials, and is known for her collaborations with non-human intelligences including artificial neural networks (computing systems inspired by biological brains) and organisms such as bacteria and slime mould. By exploring how people might listen to microscopic life and other forms of intelligence, her works propose a future in which human and non-human entities can communicate and co-exist on equal terms.  

‘nimiia cétiï uses machine learning to generate a new written and spoken language based on a computer’s interpretation of a Martian tongue from the late 1800s, originally channelled by the French medium Hélène Smith and now voiced by me, as well as the movement of Bacillus subtilis, an extremophilic bacterium that, according to recent spaceflight experimentation, can survive on Mars. This bacterium is also used in the making of nattō, or fermented soybeans, a classic Japanese probiotic considered as a secret to long life. The machine, in this work, is a medium, channelling messages from entities that usually cannot speak. But the work is also about intelligent machines as aliens of our creation.’ 

– Jenna Sutela