What do smartphones and data centers have in common? They are rocks taught to think. From sand to silicon, transistors to logic gates, and ultimately so-called “artificial” intelligence, computational systems are material extensions of human thought, carrying forward its assumptions, biases, and constraints.
In We Tricked Rocks to Think, Choi extends his ongoing reflections on the limits of computation and the boundaries of knowledge. Rather than asking whether machines can think, he turns toward a more urgent question: What can be computed, and what is uncomputable? As Choi writes, “An axiomatic system cannot prove its own consistency.”
Through a series of paintings, prints, drawings, and installations—both new and in progress—Choi resists the fantasy of total knowledge, making space for uncertainty, contradiction, and forms of understanding that remain irreducibly human.