an arrangement of/for random words by jo+kapi

SMU Libraries is pleased to present an arrangement of/for random words, a solo exhibition by jo+kapi. The exhibition concludes their artist residency with SMU Libraries, during which they furthered their research and artistic collaboration with machine intelligences.

In the age of predictive text and machine-generated fluency, language is beginning to feel unstable. Scraped, clustered, tokenized, and recombined at scale, words are no longer chosen so much as they are predicted. Meaning starts to feel hollow, and uncertainty creeps in. an arrangement of/for random words explores this shifting terrain, where language resists being fixed and meaning becomes increasingly difficult to hold onto.

At the heart of the exhibition is Enzyme 2.0, a screen-based installation that digests a manifesto word by word, revealing how semiotic structure can be erased, rewritten, or momentarily glimpsed before they disappear again.

jo+kapi is a creative collaboration between media artists and creative technologists Jo Ho and Kapilan Naidu. Founded in 2021, the Singapore-based collective creates and curates interactive experiences and media art exhibitions centred around the duo’s shared interests in generative art, artificial intelligence and the transforming modes of creating and consuming digital art in the 21st century.