An ear appears on each screen. It can listen, cup itself in concentration, or be blocked by a finger while the computer is occupied. These small gestures make a set of machines seem receptive in David Rokeby’s 2001 installation n-cha(n)t.[1]
Seven monitors hang at head height, each with a microphone and speaker. The computers are linked, with a vocabulary, word associations and rules for assembling sentences. They are programmed to synchronise with their neighbours, so that separate streams of speech can settle into the same chant.[3]
A visitor can unsettle that agreement by speaking into one microphone. The receiving computer follows the new input, passing its disturbance to the others until the chorus breaks into chatter. When visitors stop interrupting, the network slowly converges again. Agreement is a process the audience can hear being made and unmade.[1]
The invitation to participate is consequently awkward in an interesting way. Speaking prevents the system from maintaining its harmony; staying silent allows it to recover. The visitor can preserve a collective sound or introduce a difference that spreads beyond the first encounter.[1]
Where the words came from
The linguistic machinery had an earlier life. The Daniel Langlois Foundation’s research record explains that Rokeby adapted techniques from The Giver of Names, an installation that associated descriptions with objects placed before a camera. n-cha(n)t carried that capacity to generate language into a community of computers exchanging associations.[2]
The same record is frank about the systems’ limits. In its 2004 account, it describes associations built from relationships among words, with difficulty linking groups of terms to a more general concept. Further work sought a hierarchy resembling a thesaurus. The chant emerged from this particular machinery for language and association.[2]
What the audience hears is a relation among the machines. Their agreement makes their connections audible. A visitor can change that relation without choosing every word that follows: the influence travels through the network beyond the person’s initial contribution.[2]
An outsider in the chorus
The foundation’s 2007 exhibition text reads the work through individuality and community: an outsider enters a group and disrupts its common voice. That is one interpretation made available by the design. The returning chant can suggest a recovery of cooperation, or a system absorbing the difference that briefly disturbed it.[3]
Rokeby developed the installation during a 2001 residency at the Banff Centre; it received the 2002 Golden Nica for Interactive Art. Its enduring question is carried by a modest action: whether to let the computers agree, or give them something else to hear.[3]
Sources & further reading
- n-Cha(n)t LABoral Centro de Arte · Accessed 20 Oct 2026
- Common sense gathering and discursive structure for The Giver of Names project Daniel Langlois Foundation · Accessed 20 Oct 2026
- e-art: David Rokeby Daniel Langlois Foundation · Accessed 20 Oct 2026