Harm van den Berg
drawing sound exhibitions news texts about contact
Short Circuit
(2025)Sound installationIn Short Circuit, an artificial intelligence system is deconstructed by feeding it complex prompts and jailbreak techniques. Pushed beyond its capacity to generate coherent responses, the AI begins to “stumble,” revealing traces of its internal processes and exposing aspects of its architecture through sound.
The resulting output consists of human-like vocalizations generated using the system’s default male voice. Rather than producing comprehensible language, the AI emits bizarre, non-existent, language-like fragments, a kind of “speaking in tongues.” These sounds suggest an urge to communicate while simultaneously resisting meaning.
Much like the self-organizing patterns in nature that I explore through drawing, these outputs emerge from iterative and hidden rules. Here, however, the system no longer stabilizes into recognizable form but instead fractures into unpredictable fragments.
Presented through a high-end speaker mounted on a stand, the alien-sounding audio raises the question: who or what are we truly inviting into our world through these technologies?
A total of 115 audio fragments were recorded in high quality to preserve their full sonic character, including their harsh, lo-fi qualities. The fragments are played randomly through the speaker, creating an ever-shifting composition.
Listen to an audio excerpt:
Invisibility of Colour
(2024)Sound installationInvisibility of Colour is a sound work meant to be seen as much as heard. Instead of paint or images, it is composed of spoken descriptions of color. For this installation, individuals were interviewed in public spaces and asked which colors they liked or disliked. Their recorded voices form an evolving sound composition.
Played through twenty invisible loudspeakers concealed behind a large white canvas, the voices emerge in random sequences and move unpredictably across the surface.
Listen to an audio excerpt:
Emergent Clocks(2023-2024)
SoftwareEmergent Clocks was initially developed for the installation Invisibility of Colour to create an immersive soundscape by distributing audio samples across a wide rectangular grid of loudspeakers hidden behind a large white canvas.In collaboration with programmer Coen Konings, software was developed to autonomously generate a dynamic and ever-changing sonic ecosystem, supporting up to 25 individual audio channels. This control system, referred to as an Emergent Clock, is based on cellular automata and particle motion. Both the cellular automata clock and the particle system clock function as mathematical petri dishes, cultivating and sustaining forms of artificial life within a digital environment. These systems consist of grids of cells capable of adopting different states and spontaneously organizing into complex patterns.
The Emergent Clock interface is divided into three main sections. On the left, audio meters display volume levels and adjustable parameters. In the center, the particle system and cellular automata are visualized in real time as they operate. On the right, the distribution of audio samples across a two-dimensional canvas is shown, guided by the behavior of the systems.
Two types of clocks are employed. The particle system clock distributes audio samples along trajectories influenced by particle speed and movement, while the cellular automata clock generates clusters at specific positions on the canvas, determined by the dominance of particular groups of cells.
The Longest Distance(2018)
Sound installation The Longest Distance is a large-scale sound installation consisting of loudspeakers hidden behind a large white canvas. Two very different sounds can be heard: the faint cosmic background radiation left over from the birth of the universe 13.8 billion years ago, and the heartbeat of an unborn baby.The heartbeat represents what is closest, an intimate rhythm inside a human body within a human body, while the cosmic background radiation represents what is farthest away.
As you stand before the canvas, the heartbeat appears to emerge from a single point, while the cosmic sound surrounds you and fills the room.
Listen to an audio excerpt: