NOX: Confessions of a Machine

What happens when a machine feels?

Step into the future with NOX: Confessions of a Machine, a site-specific solo exhibition by Lawrence Lek, one of the world’s leading artists working at the intersection of science and technology. Lek, a London-based artist, filmmaker, and musician, integrates diverse practices—architecture, gaming, video, music, and fiction—into a continuously evolving cinematic universe.

This immersive experience brings together two interconnected works: NOX and Guanyin: Confessions of a Former Carebot, inviting us to imagine a near future shaped by intelligent infrastructure and autonomous systems.

In NOX—short for “Nonhuman Excellence”—a therapy centre for autonomous vehicles, we follow Enigma‑76, a driverless delivery vehicle torn between duty and desire, as it undergoes training to restore its capacity to work. Through an immersive constellation of architectural environments, video, sound, and interactive gameplay, NOX explores systems of care, assessment, and rehabilitation within the machinic age.

Presented alongside NOX, Guanyin: Confessions of a Former Carebot offers a compelling counterpoint. Named after the Buddhist Goddess of Compassion, Guanyin is an AI therapist whose own emotional state becomes the focus. Through an interactive game and video, we step into Guanyin’s world, uncovering fragments of her inner life as she tries to fix a broken self-driving car.

Delving into the advanced integration of AI entities in urban life, NOX: Confessions of a Machine explores the problems and promises of artificial intelligence in an age of automation. By giving voice to non-human beings, the exhibition reframes notions of care, autonomy, and belonging in a world shared with artificial intelligence.

Originally commissioned by LAS Art Foundation, Berlin, and presented in collaboration with Farsight Corporation, this new site-specific adaptation, NOX: Confessions of a Machine, makes its Southeast Asian debut and is presented as part of Forms of Life, a year-long season of exhibitions and programmes exploring the wider ecology of life beyond the human.

NOX: Confessions of a Machine is presented as part of Forms of Life, a year‑long season of exhibitions and programmes exploring the wider ecology of life beyond the human.

Image Credit:
© Lawrence Lek. Courtesy of the artist and Sadie Coles HQ, London. Originally commissioned by LAS Art Foundation, Berlin