Pierre Huyghe Idiom, 2024

Pierre Huyghe’s Idiom continues the artist’s use of masks as carriers of self-generative information systems. In this most recent, AI-generated iteration, the masks create a new language in real time, unintelligible to the visitor and in perpetual development.

Cast from resin, the gold- or brass-colored helmets can be worn over the face and parts of the head. Their inside hosts a technologically sophisticated sensorium which continuously gathers information from its environment, including sound, face recognition, temperature, and other parameters. An apparatus akin to a human voice box then articulates the information into a new language of phonemes, syntax, and light signals. Evolving as the work is being exhibited, the masks form a self-contained community which communicates through the shared Idiom.