There is a symbolic parallel between impermanence and language when it comes to human-based computation. This conceptual pairing is the idea behind the work Failed Attempt #1 (democary) I presented at Kumu Art Museum 2026. Failed Attempt is modelled after a Captcha I was asked to decipher after being logged out of my old Wikipedia account. A Captcha, is a security puzzle made to distinguish between humans and robots on websites. The software system auto-generates a visual problem that only the human eye can solve. In this case, an A.I misspelling of the word Democracy (Greek for: people and power). I created a 7-meter-long stencil from the found Captcha, through which I poured black desert sand, leaving a sculptural drawing directly on the floor of the museum’s entrance hall. I chose this placement to crowd control the flow of people walking between the cloakrooms and information desk.

Over the course of 24 hours the security word had entropically changed from a crowd-controller into a shapeless mess of footprints and children’s drawings. It was a symbolic way of letting people take sensory control of an everyday digital obstacle, that is also a commercial scheme.  

The work was a part of the exhibition Galatea’s Triumph: Art in the Age of Artificial Intelligence in the exhibition hall on the 5th floor of Kumu.