Echo and Oracle

Echo and Oracle highlights the myth that technology and changes therein have always generated, in equal parts, fears and unfounded hopes. The case of artificial intelligence is no exception. Based on news about artificial intelligence and a synthetic voice model of the poet himself in Catalan, Spanish and English, Eduard Escoffet proposes a sound installation that turns text into a physical element, reflecting on obsolescence and optimism towards technology. On the other hand, he proposes a poetic artifact in which artificial intelligence is not an actor that puts human capabilities at risk but rather integrates it as another tool at the service of creation, which can reach territories only dreamed of until now. 

In form, the installation consists of a small chapel or shrine-like space that, with shelves on either side that are filled with speakers from various eras. It presents a multichannel, immersive sound piece that evolves as the news about artificial intelligence change. 

The title refers to the Greek mythological character of Echo, a nymph with a precious voice, condemned to repeat only the last word spoken by the people who talk to her, and to the oracle, the revelation about the future that the gods gave through the pythonesses or sibyls. It is also a reference to one of Gracián's primordial works: Oráculo manual. Both references relate to the voice, but from two different points of view: the repetition of what is already known, of what has already been said, and the hard-to-understand revelation of what must happen. In fact, we ask the artificial intelligence to act as a god, as a differentiated and superior personification of humans, but it is nothing more than a tool that, despite its precious voice, speaks from what has already been said and without understanding its own utterances. That is then also why the installation takes the form of a chapel or small shrine. As was the case with the oracles that were transmitted by the pythonesses’ voices, this installation transmits a cacophony that makes it difficult to understand the precise meaning of what is said. Most importantly, it acts as a space in which the information becomes a physical presence —the voice— and a complex landscape. 

Echo and Oracle is a work created expressly for the exhibition AI: Artificial Intelligence. It is a co-creation project between the poet and artist Eduard Escoffet, BSC scientists Maria Cristina Marinescu, Maite Melero and Quim Moré with Julia Múgica, Ivan Paz and Roger Pibernat from axolot.cat. 

AI: Artificial Intelligence is an exhibition co-produced by the CCCB and the Barcelona Supercomputing Center — Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS), based on an original traveling exhibition curated and organized by the Barbican Centre in London in 2019. It was presented at the CCCB from 18^th of October 2023 to 17^th of March 2024.