Bathroom Archive is an installation with a drawing machine that mimics latrinalia (messages found on bathroom walls). The work explores what is created or lost when a machine reproduces these texts without context or understanding, and reflects on how we assign meaning to language.
Bathroom Archive explores how humans and machines experience and interpret language differently. The work focuses on latrinalia, the messages, jokes, and confessions often found on bathroom walls. These scribbles can be strange, poetic, funny, or even deeply personal.
The installation features a drawing machine that mimics latrinalia.
I approached the machine as a learning process, designing and programming it myself as a way to explore how meaning shifts through this system.
It imitates the act of writing on a wall, but without knowing what it’s writing or why. A message like “I am scared of Jason Derulo #free me” might be funny or emotional to a human, but the machine just follows instructions.
This difference in how we relate to language is at the core of the work. Where humans attach meaning, memories, or feelings, machines process text as patterns and data. Even when a machine produces something that looks expressive, it does so without context or understanding.
Bathroom Archive explores what is lost and what might be created when a machine attempts to replicate human language or symbols it does not understand. It reveals the gap between human meaning and the way machines process language without context or reflection
Credits
Artistic Concept:
Dewi Mac Donald
Sculpture:
Dewi Mac Donald
Programming:
Hazál Ates
Job van Nuenen
Sen van der Heide
Dewi Mac Donald
Artistic Guidance:
Juli Laczkó
Ronald Nijhof
Research Facility:
University of the Arts Utrecht
Woodworking guidance:
Nils van Gaalen
Bas Vijn
Niels Kerkkamp
Metalworking guidance:
Ellen Keijzer
Hans Rademaker
Erwin Woldring
Emilio Timp
Previous Iteration
Plotter machine in collaberation with:
Frank Doornbos
Jonas van Son
Sjoerd Helder
Exhibited
Sonic City - AG (Academie Gallery)
01.02 – 09.02.2025
Exposure - HKU Media
25.06 - 29.06.2025