EXCERPT From October 2023 to January 2024, Lawrence Lek’s exhibition NOX, in collaboration with LAS Art Foundation, ran at the former shopping mall Kranzler Eck in Berlin. NOX follows an errant, self-driving delivery vehicle who undergoes a rehabilitation programme in the eponymous building. Spread over three floors, the exhibition was Lek’s largest installation to date. Previously, his work had ranged from ‘site-specific simulation’ through to ‘sinofuturist’ meditations on AI, both deploying game engine software to produce cinematic, computer-designed worlds. Also a musician, sound has played a key role in Lek’s work, and in NOX, through combining the idea of the guided audio walk with open-world game interactivity, he expands the idea of the audio essay. Our fictional experience of AI — whether in literature, film or games — usually makes a correspondence between having a voice and having agency. Clearly, this is a narrative device in order to make the inhuman relatable to humans. The following conversation with Steve Goodman (11 December 2023) revolves around methodological issues that arise in using voice across virtual and physical space, and the aesthetic choices that inform its use in tandem with music and sound design. Steve Goodman: I would like to begin by talking about the way in which the audio dimension of NOX is installed into and structured around the space of Kranzler Eck. This former shopping mall feels like a Ballardian stage set, both in its commercial abandonment and as the site of car crashes. After I visited the exhibition, you sent me a linear version of the interactive soundtrack. Did you make this mixed-down version first, and then distribute certain chunks of that in different parts of the space, or did you see the space first, decide which areas would fulfil certain functions, and then make audio to suit those? How did you go about using locative audio to map out the space into different territories which corresponded to different parts of the audio? Can you talk a little about the process here? Lawrence Lek: My first idea was to think about transforming the whole building into this hybrid stage set, where the fictional rehab programme would take place over five days, like a five-act play. The next series of decisions concerned how to create a walk-through narrative that worked in the space and that unfolds over different floors. How do I apply this specific narrative about this self-driving car treatment centre to an abandoned but atmospheric building?…