for Antoine Bertin
If you could, what would you ask a bat? The Bat Cloud proposes an interspecies encounter - part divination, part act of listening. It is an opportunity for humans to ask bats a question, with the help of an artificial intelligence oracle trained to listen to their conversations.
The Oracle of Echoes — A Constellation of Bat Voices
The Bat Cloud is built on a machine-learning system designed to listen to bat vocalisations, map their communications, and explore how humans might speak back—carefully, respectfully. Using thousands of calls, a constellation of meanings was created: each point a bat voice, clusters revealing seven facets of bat life: Echolocation, Fear, Attraction, Solicitation, Attention, Territory, and Arousal.
The oracle listens to the ripples of a human question, maps them onto this constellation, and returns the closest behavioural cluster.
In this way, signals become liquid and acoustic waves, travelling back through the forest—allowing bats to hear us as we listen to them. The Bat Cloud is the digital version of the artwork by Antoine Bertin presented at SFER IK Museum, Tulum.
The work draws from the echoes of the Mayan forest and the resonant cenotes—ecosystems seen as paths to the infraworld, where beings have long listened across deep time, and bats are messengers.
The Bat Cloud’s website has received the FWA Of The Day (FOTD) Award for 11th May 2026!
