Galina Bleikh, artist

«8. And the Lord scattered them from there upon the face of the entire earth, and they ceased building the city. 9. Therefore, He named it Babel, for there the Lord confused the language of the entire earth, and from there the Lord scattered them upon the face of the entire earth.» (Genesis, Chapter 11)

Today, we, armed with computers, iPads, tablets and smartphones, are struggling to overcome the confusion of languages ??with the help of new technologies – a variety of auto-translators. One of them is called Babylon. Apparently, not by chance, since the quality of the auto-translation is poor. But mechanical translations from the Hebrew with nikud, in which the story of the mixing of languages ??was first recorded, look especially curious. It is clear that the distortion of the text during translation leads to a distortion of meanings. No wonder the first translation of the Torah into Greek, carried out in about the III Century BC., is considered by Judaism as a national tragedy, because since then everyone has been given the opportunity to judge and interpret the source from a distorted version of the text. In connection with this, the question arises: is today’s integral association of people the construction of the “Tower of Babel”? I think while we are building only a house of cards. Real unification of people is possible only at a higher level of self-awareness.

The installation “AutoBabylon” is a house of cards, built of 92 cards with automatic translations of the text of Genesis 11: 8 and 9 into various languages, made by the most common auto-translator – Google Translate.