In his new works, Albrectsen draws evocative word combinations lifted from websites that use CAPTCHAs (Completely Automated Public Turing tests to tell Computers and Humans Apart). These randomly generated word combinations filter anthropoid users from malicious spam bots. Surprisingly, the fragmented CAPTCHAs originate from physical library books and are isolated words seized from their literary context. The authored words, too distorted by time and tear and left unidentifiable by AI scanners, are sent back to the internet users as online Turing tests, who in return help digitise books for Google. In Recaptures, there is an initial familiarity in what we encounter: the Latin script, the black-on-white quality of charcoal on paper as typical of either writing or drawing, the associated traces of a human hand and the excess charcoal dust mouth-blown across the paper. The graffiti-esque aesthetics of the drawn text result from a stencil-like tool that holds the porous vine-wood charcoal substance at bay.

By transferring the CAPTCHA words from the screen onto paper, Albrectsen invites a potential poetic reading, as they are restored in their original cellulose medium but in a new and less restrictive context. Just like the spam poetry, or spoems, that emerged in the early 2000s by internet-based authors who composed phrases from subject lines or phishing emails, the non-linear language of the found wordings used by Albrectsen also relates in spirit to the cut-out writings of William S. Burroughs, T. S. Eliot and the early Dadaists. Fittingly enough, Dada and data – nonsense and information – are arguably the two driving opposite forces demanding our attention in today's digital media landscape.

Where artificial intelligence creates problems while solving others, only humans create poetry from boredom or curiosity. This human-versus-machine complex raises future questions: If language is grounded in experience and computers are writing for humans – how will meaning continue to morph? Can it morph until it becomes so unrecognisable that any reading is nearly impossible, leaving us with an abyss that even poetry or nonsense cannot fill? Regardless of this question, in Recaptures, the viewer can actively decipher or bypass the works without being questioned on their humanity – or lack thereof.