FREEDOM OF SPEECH

Unveiled at the Next Gen’24: Give an X conference at the Barbican Centre in London, Freedom of Speech is a participatory digital installation that translates voice into visual force. The work transforms sound into movement, revealing the radical potential of speech in a world that often demands silence.

At its core lies a powerful synthesis of art and code. Inspired by Conway’s Game of Life which is a mathematical model of cellular automata, the piece uses spoken words to trigger a chain reaction of life-like behavior. Every utterance becomes a spark: one cell is born, then multiplies, unfolding into a living system of change. But these are no generic cells, they are the faces of migrants from Journey Mercies, reanimated pixel by pixel. When you speak, you are not merely interacting with a screen; you are activating humanity itself.

Freedom of Speech is a visual metaphor for the ripple effect of expression. The installation listens, responds, and evolves with each sound, whether it’s a whispered truth, a shout of resistance, or even the accidental hum of the environment.

In this way, the piece resists the notion of silence as neutrality. It affirms that our voices matter and that even a single word has the capacity to reshape reality. By giving shape to sound, Freedom of Speech calls us to participate in building the world we want, one word at a time.

Created in collaboration with Graham Chuwumaobi.