April 2026 installation at the Ammerman Center for Arts and Technology, Connecticut College, CT.
EMLang
2023-2026
multimedia installation
A speculative body of work exploring humanity's academic and artistic response to a multimodal alien language derived from the hydrogen atom.
Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe. It is the simplest element, with only one proton and one electron.
Like all elements, hydrogen produces a unique set of electromagnetic emissions: spectral lines of specific colors that correspond to that single electron jumping between energy levels.
Unlike other elements, the simplicity of hydrogen made its spectra singularly useful in the development of quantum mechanics, complexity & understanding arising from the simplest of forms.
EMLang is a constructed language that manifests these hydrogen emission spectra into color, sound, and haptics, turning this simplest of forms into a complex linguistic system that mediates understanding between sentient individuals.
How would this language be written? How could we, as sonic interlocutors, interpret this language within the limits of our bodies? How would we apply our theories, academics, and technologies to the unfurling of this language?
