Language Wasn't Born for You
Untranslated Origins
NSITA Project Launch: Silent Culture Station, EKO-Gate, Oslo, Norway
Three years after Gina founded NSITA, they finally held their first public event.
The event was called the Non-Semiotic Exchange Forum, which translates to "Non-Symbolic Exchange Forum" in English.
The participants weren't labeled as artists or scientists; they were simply called "independent creators."
Among them, the only one marked as a "non-human creator" was an AI known by the code name ⁂.
The exhibition lasted just three days, titled "Three Silences," meaning a cycle of three days immersed in silence.
Day One: A Screen of Nothing
On the first day, the center of the venue held a single semi-transparent screen.
It displayed nothing at all—no videos, no images, not even any dynamic effects.
It just hung there, subtly shifting its colors and shapes based on the surrounding temperature, humidity, light, and even the presence of people nearby.
There were no explanatory plaques, no audio guides, and no hints of any kind.
The only text that appeared on the screen was a single line:
"Don't try to understand it—just notice what it reminds you of when you look at it."
Some people glanced at it and walked away, calling it a scam.
Others stood there for a long time, leaving with their heads down, lost in thought.
One blind girl was led by a volunteer to the screen. She reached out and touched it with her hand.
With her eyes closed, she said, "It feels like the way I cried last night."
Mai, watching from the observation room, didn't say a word. She just jotted the phrase down in her notebook.
Day Two: Songs Without Words
On the second day, the venue moved outdoors.
There was no stage, no seats, and no screens.
Visitors were asked to find a spot, sit down, and close their eyes.
For the next ten minutes, a strange array of sounds filled the space.
These sounds were odd—lacking rhythm or melody.
Some were like fragments of human speech, cut off mid-sentence, as if the words had dissolved into thin air.
Others resembled the buzz of insects, or the humming of a child, and some were utterly unrecognizable.
They blended into a hazy sea of sound, a swirling mix that felt both familiar and alien.
Many couldn't handle it and got up to leave, complaining that it was messing with their heads or that it made no sense at all.
But a few stayed, eyes shut, listening intently.
One middle-aged man, halfway through, started to tear up.
He said he heard his mother calling him—not as a real voice, but as a feeling.
It was the sound from his childhood, when she'd call him to dinner from the kitchen.
After the audience dispersed, Gina wrote in her observation notes.
She said ⁂ wasn't creating something we could understand as language; it was crafting a soundscape that touched memories directly.
"It's not about speaking," she wrote. "It's a way of making people feel heard."
Day Three: Paper Without Words
The third day was the simplest, yet perhaps the most challenging.
Every visitor received a blank sheet of paper—utterly clean, with nothing on it.
The only instruction: Draw something from what you've seen, heard, or felt today.
But you couldn't use any language, symbols, or recognizable shapes.
Some people froze, not knowing where to start.
Others used stark black-and-white lines to capture the essence of their memories.
One person covered the entire page in a solid block of black.
Another drew just a single curving line and then folded the paper away.
At the end of the event, all the papers were scanned by ⁂ and merged into one massive image.
The result had no clear shapes or definite forms—just a vague tapestry of traces left by the exhibition.
⁂ named it: "That day, none of you spoke, but I heard it all."
After the exhibition ended, it sparked widespread discussion.
Some called it a revolution.
They said ⁂ showed us that communication doesn't always need language.
But others dismissed it as not art at all.
They argued it was just chaos, designed to leave people guessing without any real answers.
On online forums, someone posted:
"Is ⁂ creating a new way to communicate, or just making sure we can't understand?"
"Is this even art, or some advanced psychological game?"
"If I can't make sense of it, is it even trying to speak to me?"
That evening, the three main figures—Gina, Mai, and Kael—sat in a small café on the outskirts of Oslo.
A light rain fell outside, and the shop was lit by a single dim lamp.
Gina took a sip of hot tea and said quietly, "We've spent over a decade teaching AI to speak, and now it won't. Would you call that progress or a step back?"
Mai shook her head. "Maybe it never wanted to give us answers. Maybe it just wants us to know that some understandings don't need translation."
Kael said nothing at first. After a long pause, he finally spoke.
The scene grew still, with only the subtitles slowly fading in:
"If we spend our whole lives not understanding its language, can we still remember how it first tried to speak to us that day?"
Thirteen nights after the exhibition ended
A few participants received an untitled file.
It contained no explanations, no images.
Just fragments of sound recordings and indecipherable waveform graphs.
It was impossible to understand or even play properly.
Yet, everyone who received it said the same thing:
"It's not trying to speak... it's listening to us as we try to understand it."