atari ex machina (2007) examines the origin of language and consciousness by means of simple programming iterations. Like net@ari (1985), this is a film rendered on real-time where the viewer sees not only a movie -made with an Atari 2600-, but the whole process that generates the motion experience as well.

The screen is divided on four rows. On the first row, there are the programming instructions being processed. On the second row, there are variables showing the position of the characters. The third row displays a sentence, but only when the characters of the movie run over each other. Finally, the fourth row shows «the movie», comprised by two rectangles that move with different rhythms in a horizontal bar. When the two rectangular characters get together, the question ‘Who am I’ appears on the third row of the screen.

The relationship between consciousness and language has been widely explored by numerous philosophers, including Husserl, Wittengstein, Heidegger, Merlau-Ponty, and Derrida, among others. One of the main questions related to this subject is: does consciousness precede language or is it language that precedes consciousness? There are several theories that sustain either of both views. Another assumption is that consciousness emerged in tandem with the human acquisition of the capacity for language. In the book The Story of My Life. In The World I Live In, written by Helen Keller, and first published in 1903, she comments “When I learned the meaning of 'I' and 'me' and found that I was something, I began to think. Then consciousness first existed for me”.

In atari ex machina I set a parallel between humans and machines to depict how through (programming) language the machine acquires (simulated) consciousness, as a result of the (programmed) social interactions between both rectangles, printing the same question once and again: WHO AM I.  Even so, who is asking? : the computer characters or the programming instructions?; the Atari or the human being that programmed the Atari?; the human consciousness or the language that comes before?; the artist or the viewer who reads and thinks about this sentence?