(non)semantic process [ version for neutrinos detected by Super-Kamiokande ]

Generating English sentences from the signals detected by Super-Kamiokande, a neutrino observatory in Japan. Because the detector has a cylindrical geometry, its data can be unfolded into a two-dimensional representation from any rotational angle. The unfolded data are converted into alphabet sequences by dividing each numerical value by 26 and replacing the remainder with the corresponding letter of the English alphabet. The artist wrote a program that reads the letter sequences from the beginning, adding letters one by one as long as they can form the beginning of a word in a dictionary. Once a word is formed, it is extracted and the process continues from the following letter. The rotational angle is determined by a random process, changing the starting point from which the cylindrical data are read and, consequently, the generated text. Scientific inquiry typically derives meaning from the quantitative distributions and relationships contained within observational data. In this work, however, those quantitative relationships are not preserved. Instead, through random rotation and transformation into natural language, a different kind of meaning emerges. The resulting English sentences may appear meaningful, although their meaning arises not from the physical phenomena that produced the signals, but from the human system of language.