About The Murmur of the Dying, 2023
In The Murmur of the Dying (2023), Femke Herregraven explores how artificial intelligence deals with forms of communication that fall outside the realm of language, such as sighs, breathing, murmuring and other involuntary sounds. AI systems are generally trained to interpret language as code and recognise meaningful patterns, whilst breathing sounds are often regarded as noise. Herregraven uses sound recordings of, amongst others, people with respiratory and speech disorders, but also of her own family, such as her children’s babbling and her parents’ breathing and murmuring on their deathbeds. In doing so, she questions the distinction between meaningful sound and noise. The film combines these recordings with thousands of medical scans of patients, used to train AI systems to recognise diseases and abnormalities. The work also features AI-generated images of a black cat, inspired by Oscar, a cat who became famous for seemingly sensing the impending death of terminally ill patients. Herregraven thus explores how breath and voice can convey connection when words fall short, and whether AI is capable of understanding such subtle, human forms of communication and empathy.