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Do robots have feelings? ArtScience Museum is inviting you to sit with that unsettling thought in NOX: Confessions of a Machine (2026), opening on January 23 alongside Singapore Art Week. This marks filmmaker Lawrence Lek’s first solo exhibition in Southeast Asia, and kicks off the museum’s 2026 season theme, Forms of Life: Beyond the Human.
Before you step into the world of NOX, here’s the person behind it: artist and filmmaker Lawrence Lek, who works across architecture, gaming, film, music, and fiction, building worlds that question the emotional lives of artificial intelligence and the idea of posthuman identity. A recipient of the 2024 Frieze London Artist Award, Lek is known for asking what happens when systems built for efficiency begin to develop feelings they were never designed to have.
In NOX, you’re dropped into a near-future smart city run by a fictional tech conglomerate called Farsight Corporation, where sentient self-driving vehicles are sent to a therapy and training centre when their emotions start interfering with performance. You step in as a trainee therapist, making decisions through immersive spaces and a central touchscreen game set at a vehicle charging station.
The exhibition continues with the segment Guanyin: Confessions of a Former Carebot, in which you inhabit the perspective of Guanyin, an armoured robot therapist named after the Bodhisattva of Compassion. As you diagnose and repair malfunctioning vehicles, you also uncover fragments of Guanyin’s own emotional strain and fatigue.
Apart from NOX: Confessions of a Machine, Insects: Microsculptures Magnified is also part of ArtScience Museum’s 2026 overarching season – one that aims to widen the lens beyond people to include insects, artificial intelligence and ocean ecosystems.
Find out more about the exhibition here.
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