Uzbekistan 2022

Title: Dixit Algorizmi: Garden of Knowledge
Commissioner: Gayane Umerova, Art and Culture Development Foundation
Curator: Studio Space Caviar (Joseph Grima, Camilo Oliveira), Sheida Gomashchi
Exhibitor: Charlie Tapp/Abror Zufarov, CCA Lab

For its first participation as a National Pavilion, Uzbekistan presents at the 59th Venice Biennale “Dixit Algorizmi: Garden of Knowledge“. The exhibition features a new collaborative work by Space Caviar, Abror Zufarov and Charli Tapp that places a particular focus on the concept of the algorithm, an invention responsible for much of the way the modern world operates. The aim is to underline the relationship between the algorithm and its originator, the 9th-century polymath, “father of algebra” and “grandfather of computer science” Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, who was born and raised in the present-day Uzbek city of Khiva. Indeed, the word “algorithm” originates from Algorismus, a mangled Latin transliteration of al-Khwarizmi. Al-Khwarizmi’s influence in Europe led to the popularization of algorithms, Arabic numerals, decimals, and algebra.

The pavilion’s physical centrepiece is an indoor installation realized by Space Caviar, which reinterprets the millennial-old formal tradition of Persian and Babylonian gardens, which references the place where al-Khwarizmi developed most of these major studies: the House of Wisdom in Baghdad.

The installation is accompanied by a soundscape developed as a collaboration between Uzbek musician Abror Zufarov and Paris and Tokyo-based artist and composer Charli Tapp. Their new sound-based project explores how artificial intelligence responds to data sets of non-Western music.