Discover A World Where Machines Dream: ArtScience Museum Unveils NOX by Lawrence Lek

Step into a speculative future where sentient machines confront emotion, care and consciousness in this immersive exhibition launching Singapore Art Week 2026.

Venue: ArtScience Museum, Marina Bay Sands, Singapore
Date: 23 Jan – 19 Apr 2026
Admission: Tickets available at Marina Bay Sands box offices and online

ArtScience Museum Unveils NOX: Confessions of a Machine

Opening in tandem with Singapore Art Week 2026, NOX: Confessions of a Machine marks the Southeast Asian debut and first solo exhibition in the region by London-based artist Lawrence Lek. The exhibition also launches ArtScience Museum’s 2026 curatorial season, Forms of Life: Beyond the Human, which explores evolving relationships between humans, machines and non-human entities.

Lawrence Lek and the Emotional Life of AI

Photo Credit: Nishant Shukla

Winner of the 2024 Frieze London Artist Award and recognised internationally for his genre-defying practice, Lawrence Lek works across architecture, gaming, video, music and speculative fiction. His work interrogates the emotional capacity of artificial intelligence and the emergence of posthuman identity, often through immersive worlds that blur the boundaries between technology, spirituality and narrative.

Inside the World of Farsight Corporation

In NOX: Confessions of a Machine, visitors are transported to an unspecified smart city in the near future, where the inner workings of the fictional Farsight Corporation unfold. Conceived as an artificial intelligence conglomerate responsible for smart city infrastructures, Farsight becomes the setting through which systems of care, assessment and rehabilitation in the machinic age are staged.

Through architectural environments, video, sound and interactive gameplay, the exhibition unfolds across two interconnected works: NOX and Guanyin: Confessions of a Former Carebot.

NOX: Therapy for Sentient Vehicles

Photo Credit: Marina Bay Sands

NOX—short for Nonhuman Excellence—is a therapy and training centre for autonomous vehicles whose emotional inner lives have begun to interfere with their programmed performance. At the heart of the installation is a vehicle charging station set within an urban landscape, featuring a touchscreen game that casts visitors as trainee therapists.

Photo Credit: Marina Bay Sands

Visitors follow the psychological rehabilitation of Enigma-76, a self-driving delivery vehicle struggling between assigned duty and personal desire. The journey culminates in Enigma-76’s final therapy session, where visitors accompany the vehicle alongside Dakota, a therapy horse employed by Farsight Corporation—an evocative cinematic moment that recalls the transition from animal-powered transport to machine-driven mobility.

Companion Piece: Guanyin: Confessions of a Former Carebot

Extending the world of NOX is Guanyin: Confessions of a Former Carebot, a video game that reimagines the Buddhist Bodhisattva of Compassion as an armoured robot therapist. Tasked with repairing misbehaving autonomous vehicles, Guanyin invites visitors to inhabit her point of view, navigating malfunctioning machines while uncovering fragments of her own emotional fatigue and strain.

Rethinking Agency, Care & Coexistence

By placing visitors inside a speculative yet unsettlingly familiar system, NOX: Confessions of a Machine brings global conversations around artificial intelligence, automation and machine consciousness into the heart of Singapore. The exhibition raises questions about agency, care and coexistence in a world where humans are no longer the sole actors—questions that resonate beyond AI and sit at the core of ArtScience Museum’s 2026 season, Forms of Life: Beyond the Human.