Welcome to Bletchley Park

Rooted in Shannon's mathematical theory of communication and the historical context of wartime cryptography, these students chose to examine how the processes of encoding, transmission and decipherment can be illustrated through an immersive, experiential format.

Drawing on the figure of Alan Turing and the codebreaking operations conducted at Bletchley Park during the Second World War, they designed an escape game exposition that places Shannon's foundational communication model at the centre of a lived, interactive inquiry into the conditions under which information is produced, distorted and ultimately recovered.

The Information Epidemic


In the context of rising far-right movements across Western Europe, a group of students chose to address the mechanisms of disinformation through a Bauhaus-inspired artistic exhibition.


Their objective was to explore how media, and in particular social media, contributes to the spread of false information and the radicalization of public opinion. To accomplish this, the students mobilized three key concepts drawn from the theories of Norbert Wiener: cybernetics, feedback, and entropy.

Cybernemasks
Inspired by Norbert Wiener's cybernetics theory and the aesthetic principles of the Bauhaus movement, this group of students created an exhibition titled "Cybernemasks," combining artistic construction with communication theory into a single interactive concept.

Their objective was to bring together two ways of thinking, one scientific, one artistic, and to make the abstract mechanisms of communication tangible for a general audience. To accomplish this, the students drew on Wiener's core model of communication, in which a message travels from a transmitter through a channel to a receiver, before returning to the source as feedback.

Cipher Crash

On August 10, 2006, British and American intelligence services dismantled one of the most ambitious terrorist plots since September 11. Ten transatlantic flights departing from London Heathrow were targeted, the weapon of choice being liquid explosives concealed in soft drink bottles.

The operation was the result of eight months of surveillance, and it was ultimately a single intercepted message, "Do your attacks now," decoded in under 72 hours, that allowed authorities to act. Among 82 arrests, 24 individuals were captured in London and its surroundings. An aviation security expert later stated that, had the plot succeeded, the loss of life would have surpassed that of the 2001 attacks.

Puzzle

During the Second World War, the radio occupied a unique and deeply ambiguous position in French society. It served simultaneously as a tool of mass propaganda for the Pétain regime and the Nazi occupiers, and as a lifeline for the Resistance and the Allies, who used the same airwaves to transmit coded messages and sustain opposition.

The Radio de Vichy in particular functioned as one of the most powerful instruments of social control of the occupation period, broadcasting messages that were deliberately contradictory: on one side defending French traditional values, on the other justifying forced collaboration with the occupying power. To illuminate this, the students mobilized two theoretical frameworks.

Apartheid

Apartheid, meaning "separation" in Afrikaans, designated the system of institutionalised racial segregation enforced in South Africa from 1948 to 1991. Established by the National Party, it aimed to maintain the political, economic and social dominance of the white minority over the black majority and other ethnic groups through a series of legislative measures that regulated where people could live, which services they could access, and which languages they were required to learn.

It was within this context that a group of students chose to examine how communication itself was instrumentalised to reinforce inequality, justify domination, and at the same time, fuel resistance. To accomplish this, the students mobilised three theoretical frameworks.

ChatGPT

At a time when digital tools have become central to everyday life, a group of students chose to examine one of the most rapidly growing of them all. Since its first version in 2022, ChatGPT had surpassed 200 million active weekly users by August 2024, establishing itself as both a personal assistant and an economic force, with French AI company Mistral AI valued at nearly 6 billion euros in June of the same year.

The students' objective was twofold: to demonstrate the concrete impact of ChatGPT on daily human activity, and to prove that Norbert Wiener's cybernetics theory, developed in 1947, remains entirely applicable to the systems of today. To accomplish this, the students applied three core cybernetic concepts to the functioning of ChatGPT.

Slideshow Of Other Exhibitions