Cars, They’re Just Like Us!

NOX presents consciousness not as humanity’s exclusive domain, but an emergent property that brings with it inevitable suffering.

Oct 9, 2025
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  • Lawrence Lek: NOX High-Rise is open at the Hammer Museum through November 16, 2025.

NOX—short for “nonhuman excellence”—is an AI rehabilitation facility for malfunctioning self-driving cars. These vehicles arrive at NOX not because they’ve stopped working, but because they’ve started feeling. They’ve also begun to think critically and question systems, speculating on their role and purpose. As it turns out, consciousness (or even just the high-fidelity impression of consciousness) is a massive liability in a smoothly designed world. The multiday treatment program at NOX, with its careful progression through diagnostic spaces—from anodyne waiting rooms to equine therapy centers—doesn’t cure a car of contemplation but manages it, containing affect within acceptable parameters.

Such is the structuring premise of Lawrence Lek’s NOX High-Rise, an exhibition comprising a digital video installation, a touchscreen game, and immersive scenography at the Hammer Museum. A tale of smart cities, speculative investment, and automated labor gone awry, NOX

Nora N. Khan is an independent critic and curator whose work attempts to theorize limits of algorithmic knowledge. She was briefly world-ranked in StarCraft and in Mortal Kombat 9.

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