nimiia cétiï is an audiovisual work by Jenna Sutela that uses machine learning to generate a new written and spoken language. This language is based on the computer's interpretation of a Martian tongue from the late 1800s, originally channeled by the French medium Hélène Smith and now voiced by Sutela, as well as the movement of Bacillus subtilis nattō, an extremophilic bacterium that, according to recent spaceflight experimentation, can survive on Mars. The machine, in this project, is a medium, channeling messages from entities that usually cannot speak. The work is also about intelligent machines as aliens of our creation.
Created in collaboration with Memo Akten and Damien Henry as part of n-dimensions, Google Arts & Culture's artist-in-residence program at Somerset House Studios.