The algorithm of the stone is a polyptych work consisting of a speculative fiction story, the digital drawing of a vulture composed of entries from Ioannis Kondylakis’ Cretan vocabulary, and the act of integrating this drawing into the landscape of Psiloritis. The story refers to a future hypothetical scenario in which more-than-human beings develop ways of recognizing non-hostile humans and build alliances and synergies through language. In this story, words gather into clouds and shift, creating new narratives. The vulture drawing made of words illustrates elements of this story but also constitutes in itself an example of how words can be rearranged beyond alphabetical classification.

The body of the predatory flying creature transforms into an archive of a local vocabulary.
The words replace its organs, its skin, its wings, its bones.
They are translated into animal matter.
For the needs of the act, and according to the instructions of Franck-Lee Alli-Tis, this drawing is soaked in water and pressed onto the rocks of the mountain so that it is absorbed into the stone, the words seeping into the mountain’s cracks and mutating—as described in the story.

Thus, the mountain itself participates in shaping the words, defining their order and form, like a more-than-human grammar of words belonging to humans, animals, landscape, and atmosphere—a language of kinship and alliance, opposed only to the alphabetical order of things.

The algorithm of the stone is specially created for the First and Last and Always Psiloritis Biennale. Curated by Stamatis Schizakis.

You can view the work here: The algorithm of the stone