Exhibit: Ken Jacobs - wager any umbrella
Ken Jacobs’s *wager any umbrella* is an installation of poems, scrolls, drapes, and panels generated from a software project that searches scanned text for near-oronyms—words or sounds that emerge across word boundaries. The exhibition considers the possibilities and limits of computational language-making, including Jacobs’s growing doubts about the technical integrity of the artificial intelligence used in developing the work.
The title phrase can produce “geranium” through a small alteration and originated in *Sooner* (2009), a poem built around phonemic constraints. The project later expanded into the serial poem *word boundary*, which now contains more than one hundred sections. The installation presents indirect remnants of the software process, along with a digital visualization that maps the scanner’s output.
When: November 3–December 6, 2026
Showtimes: The event listing runs from 10:00 AM on November 3 through 10:00 PM on December 6. The exhibition is available during Rhizome DC events, or visitors may email the venue to arrange another viewing time.
Opening reception: Saturday, November 7, 3:00–6:00 PM
Closing reception: Sunday, December 6, 4:00–6:00 PM
Venue: Rhizome DC
Tickets: Price not available
Featured artist: Ken Jacobs
Artwork: The installation includes poems, scrolls, drapes, panels, and a digital visualization of material produced by the word-boundary scanner.
Technology and process: The original software used artificial-intelligence assistance to detect and assemble near-oronyms. Jacobs also used AI to investigate the personalities or “alters” presented by the tool, developing a basic agent-based, zero-trust framework concerned with memory compartmentalization, alignment, governance, and how reliably a tool follows defined instructions. Although the framework was implemented successfully, the process led to concerns about architectural drift and the integrity of the code, ultimately undermining Jacobs’s confidence in AI.
Artist background: Jacobs is a Washington, DC-based poet and software developer whose practice explores text through code, digital poetry, print, and three-dimensional structures. His publications include *Sooner* and *Unmet*. He is also a founding member of the band FREN GROUP.
Related work: Jacobs’s digital experiments include *Relegy*, a collaborative web-based compositional project presented at G Fine Art in 2011, and *adhere blow burn*.