Tessie Barrera-Scharaga. Nahua-Pipil, the Forbidden Language of El Salvador, 2014; mixed-media installation;
10 x 7 x 11 ft.

In Living with Endangered Languages in the Technological Age, curated by Hanna Regev at Root Division Gallery, thirty artists respond to a global crisis: One language becomes extinct every two weeks when its last speaker dies.

The works in the exhibition cover six continents and consider languages such as old Macedonian, Tati (Iran), Mayan (Mexico), Nahuat Pipil (El Salvador), Sindhi (India), and even notes used in Gregorian chant. Regev, who is developing a reputation for uniting cutting-edge technology and art, also encouraged artists to examine less-commonplace categories such as artificial and computer languages. This elevates what could be a UNESCO cliché into an innovative, dense show that is also interactive—works have a QR code under the wall texts so the viewer can hear the language on their mobile devices.

During the opening I interviewed some of the artists. San Francisco-based Naomie Kremer created a video of ghostly fingers typing on a keyboard, which is juxtaposed with a drawing depicting samples of her handwriting. Kremer expounded on the idea of the uniqueness of handwriting, as opposed to typing, which all looks the same. Her elegant piece illustrates the abstract, disembodied action of typing against the very human marks of handwriting.

Artist Phillip Hua collaborated with soundscape artist Taras Mashtalir to create a multimedia work that weaves Hua’s mother’s voice, reading a poem in Vietnamese, with the “voice” of Google Translate transcribing the same poem into an eight-minute song. When I asked Hua how well Google Translate did with the poem, he said, “Horribly. One of the reasons we brought it in was the thought of asking: Does technology help, is it a substitute for humans yet? At this time, it’s not.”

Philip Alden Benn, an artist who works with data visualization, created a video of a map of the world that moves with the path of the sun. Color-coded indicators appear across the different continents and then dissolve, indicating the disappearance of languages on the Earth. “I realized that the 7,000 languages that are endangered are actually cultures that the world is losing.”

Living with Endangered Languages succeeds on many levels and brings awareness to a subject that deserves more attention. Regev has brought together formidable talents who not only deliver a deft communication of the subject matter without sentimentality, but also provide solutions.

Living with Endangered Languages in the Technological Age is on view at Root Division through January 31, 2015.

Nancy Garcia is a freelance writer and television producer. She travels extensively, and happily calls San Francisco her home.

Opening tonight in San Francisco is an exhibition of new works by artist Adam Friedman entitled With a Generous Allowance of Time. The exhibition, which is on view at Eleanor Hardwood Gallery, features several collage works on panel that explore both time and the geological physicality of the world around us. The artist quoted John McPhee from his 1981 book Basin and Range to state “If you free yourself from the conventional reaction to a quantity like a million years, you free yourself a bit from the boundaries of human time.” By understanding the world around us as an epic and ongoing force for which we have the opportunity to experience for a limited time, vain concepts such as our ability to destroy the planet through an apocalypse or doomsday fades, and our understanding of the world broadens. Friedman’s landscapes depict a planet where the environmental damage that humans have caused over the past few millennia has long been healed simply through, as the title suggests, a generous allowance of time.

Friedman is a recent MFA graduate of the San Francisco Art Institute. He is currently a resident artist in the studio program at Root Division in San Francisco, where we will also have work in a group show titled Compelled which opens tomorrow evening.