Internet aesthetics like vaporwave, the Backrooms and weirdcore seem to offer glimpses of alternate realities beyond the threshold of the real. From Freud’s “uncanny” to hauntology’s spectral futures, these are aesthetics that revel in the strange, the eerie and the infinitely ambiguous – a messy, chaotic antidote to the ruthlessly curated digital landscapes we’re fed today. Art historian and curator Valentina Tanni draws from her latest book Exit Reality and helps us unpack how these liminal aesthetics tap into feelings of ambiguity, the unsettling familiar and nostalgia for futures that never were – a reaction, perhaps, to the relentless corporate co-option and algorithmic control that has degraded so much of online culture into a bland, high-affect “midness”.

[Book] Exit Reality: Vaporwave, Backrooms, Weirdcore, and Other Landscapes Beyond the Threshold, by Valentina Tanni, published by NERO Editions and Aksioma, 2024

[Interview] Daydreams, Playable Nightmares and Out-of-Body Journeys, Valentina Tanni & Silvia Dal Dosso, PostScriptUM #50, Aksioma, 2024

[Website] Valentina Tanni

COLOPHON

Host: Neja Berger
Guest: Valentina Tanni

Recording and editing: Neja Berger
Music and Audio Mix: Gašper Torkar

Production:
Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art
Ljubljana, 2024

Producer: Marcela Okretič

Part of
Tactics&Practice#15: (un)real data – real effects
Curated by !Mediengruppe Bitnik (Carmen Weisskopf in Domagoj Smoljo)
In collaboration with Janez Fakin Janša

Supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Ljubljana.

The post (un)real data | Ep.#5: The Liminal Vibes Beyond Digital Conformity [w/ Valentina Tanni] appeared first on Aksioma.

If we paraphrase McLuhan, today’s medium is the algorithm: how is this universal mediator shaping us as content creators and consumers? How does it feel to be online amid different polarising forces, when consensus reality has completely broken down? Günseli Yalcinkaya, writer and researcher specialising in youth and internet culture, has been immersing herself in the insane hidden pits of the internet to shed light on central tendencies and viral phenomena – from homogenised beauty standards imposed by filters to psyops, military e-girl influencers and heads of nation states who post memes on X – through which our online world is becoming increasingly both mid and weird.

COLOPHON

Host: Neja Berger
Guest: Günseli Yalcinkaya

Recording and editing: Neja Berger
Music and Audio Mix: Gašper Torkar

Production:
Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art
Ljubljana, 2024

Producer: Marcela Okretič

Part of
Tactics&Practice#15: (un)real data – real effects
Curated by !Mediengruppe Bitnik (Carmen Weisskopf in Domagoj Smoljo)
In collaboration with Janez Fakin Janša

Supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Ljubljana.

The post (un)real data | Ep.#4: How Mind-Flattening Algorithmic Tweaks Ruined Posting [w/ Günseli Yalcinkaya] appeared first on Aksioma.

What exactly is in the images generated by AI? Is it possible to decode training datasets and detect biases that fusion models, such as Dall-E or Midjourney, reproduce? Eryk Salvaggio, researcher and new media artist interested in the social and cultural impacts of artificial intelligence, suggests a method that enables anyone to peel off the layers behind the datasets. Exploiting the ghost human labour needed to create images and label them, the full automation of AI dehumanises the representation of the real, reducing it to clusters of pixels rearranged by statistical mathematical models. However, human agency and creativity are nested between the dots of the pixels, and they still give us the power to scratch at the surfaces that algorithms are constantly trying to reproduce.

[Website] Eryk Salvaggio

COLOPHON

Host: Neja Berger
Guest: Eryk Salvaggio

Recording and editing: Neja Berger
Music and Audio Mix: Gašper Torkar

Production:
Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art
Ljubljana, 2024

Producer: Marcela Okretič

Part of
Tactics&Practice#15: (un)real data – real effects
Curated by !Mediengruppe Bitnik (Carmen Weisskopf in Domagoj Smoljo)
In collaboration with Janez Fakin Janša

Supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Ljubljana.

The post (un)real data | Ep.#3: Unmasking AI’s Pixel Puppetry [w/ Eryk Salvaggio] appeared first on Aksioma.

Predictive models based on big data are founded on the idea that knowing the past enables us to predict the future, but what kind of future are we constructing when the models are based on a deepfake version of the past? Correlation has overtaken causation, while homophily shadows differences across these models that are not only applied in social media platforms’ algorithms, but also in policing predictives or risk assessment systems. We discuss how these practices reproduce bias and generate self-fulfilling prophecies with Wendy Chun, professor of New Media, Director of the Digital Democracies Institute and author of numerous books. Is it possible to exit the default world of endless reproducibility and conceive of a different future from what has been left out in the past?

COLOPHON

Host: Neja Berger
Guest: Wendy Chun

Recording and editing: Neja Berger
Music and Audio Mix: Gašper Torkar

Production:
Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art
Ljubljana, 2024

Producer: Marcela Okretič

Part of
Tactics&Practice#15: (un)real data – real effects
Curated by !Mediengruppe Bitnik (Carmen Weisskopf in Domagoj Smoljo)
In collaboration with Janez Fakin Janša

Supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Ljubljana.

The post (un)real data | Ep.#2: Could We Stop Reproducing a Deepfake Past? [w/ Wendy Chun] appeared first on Aksioma.

The rise of computation in the 1950s shifted society to one constructed purely in commercial terms, where selling and buying have become the main social relation and every possible human form of contact is reimagined as a service or a product. What does this imply for the self? When individuals are broken up into parts that are measurable as data streams, the self is quantified and life is understood through numbers, where the ultimate number is profit. Professor of Digital Culture and Network Theory Felix Stalder discusses the ambiguity of data, the limits of computation and what interpretations might exist beyond the world as a set of measurements.

[Video] Unreal Is the New Real, a talk by Felix Stalder at (un)real data – real effects conference, 2024

COLOPHON

Host: Neja Berger
Guest: Felix Stalder

Recording and editing: Neja Berger
Music and Audio Mix: Gašper Torkar

Production:
Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art
Ljubljana, 2024

Producer: Marcela Okretič

Part of
Tactics&Practice#15: (un)real data – real effects
Curated by !Mediengruppe Bitnik (Carmen Weisskopf in Domagoj Smoljo)
In collaboration with Janez Fakin Janša

Supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Ljubljana.

The post (un)real data | Ep.#1: (In)dividuality and the Quantified Self [w/ Felix Stalder] appeared first on Aksioma.

How to Tell

Eyal Weizman is a Professor of Spatial and Visual Cultures. He founded Forensic Architecture, where he helped develop a methodology – counter forensics – for analysing cases of human rights violations around the world to provide new evidence against official narratives in international human rights courts. Counter forensics is a response to structural limitations – such as not having access to the crime scene – and makes openly available what is concealed from the public eye. Counter forensics takes all the time needed to scan and interpret enormous amounts of data and images, trying to find clues that are already in the public domain, but which we don’t know how to look at and interconnect. Secrets can be deconstructed by following the traces they leave in the visible world,harvesting what is out there, but nobody is looking at.

Guests: Urška Henigman, radio journalist at RTV Slovenia; Matevž Čelik, architect, critic, editor, researcher; Marko Peljhan, conceptual artist and researcher.

Watch this episode in video format > HERE
Read this conversation in book format > HERE

Suggested content:

[Project]: The Beirut Port Explosion

[Talk]: Eyal Weizman: Searching for truth

[Website]: Forensic Architecture

COLOPHON

Host: Marta Peirano
Guest: Eyal Weizman

Editing, Audio Mix and Music: Gašper Torkar

(re)programming podcast series

Produced by Janez Fakin Janša and Marcela Okretič
for Tactics&Practice #10: (re)programming

Project coordinator: Sonja Grdina

Production:
Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art
Ljubljana, 2023

Part of
Tactics&Practice
konS – Platform for Contemporary Investigative Art

The project konS – Platform for Contemporary Investigative Art was chosen on the public call for the selection of the operations “Network of Investigative Art and Culture Centres”. The investment is co-financed by the Republic of Slovenia and by the European Regional Development Fund of the European Union.

The post (re)programming | Ep. #8: Accountability [w/ Eyal Weizman] appeared first on Aksioma.

Talk to Your Neighbour

Astra Taylor is an international filmmaker, writer and political organiser. She was part of the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011, and has been one of its best narrators and critics. Since then, in a series of legendary attempts to improve protest movements, she has become one of the essential chroniclers of contemporary acts of collective resistance. She is the co-founder of the Debt Collective, a debtors’ union organising to renegotiate and resist debts, that succeeded in changing first the narrative around student debt loans and then eventually the politics. In a media landscape dominated by social media, we want everything to go viral, but small groups of well-organised people can have a larger impact than millions protesting in the streets or online. Mass is not engaging, and the individual is not the scale for politics and change: the level for democracy is the collective. Talking to neighbours and breaking conversational taboos are the first steps for real change.

Guests: Tjaša Pureber, activist and social movement researcher; ​​Barbara Rajgelj, human rights activist; Asja Hrvatin, social worker and activist for the rights of refugees.

Watch this episode in video format > HERE
Read this conversation in book format > HERE

Suggested content:

[Talk]: Why Democracy Needs Socialism

[Article]: Occupy and Space 

COLOPHON

Host: Marta Peirano
Guest: Astra Taylor

Editing, Audio Mix and Music: Gašper Torkar

(re)programming podcast series

Produced by Janez Fakin Janša and Marcela Okretič
for Tactics&Practice #10: (re)programming

Project coordinator: Sonja Grdina

Production:
Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art
Ljubljana, 2023

Part of
Tactics&Practice
konS – Platform for Contemporary Investigative Art

The project konS – Platform for Contemporary Investigative Art was chosen on the public call for the selection of the operations “Network of Investigative Art and Culture Centres”. The investment is co-financed by the Republic of Slovenia and by the European Regional Development Fund of the European Union.

The post (re)programming | Ep. #7: Community [w/ Astra Taylor] appeared first on Aksioma.

Everything is Not Connected

Joana Moll is a Barcelona/Berlin-based artist and researcher. Her work moves towards a crossover between art and investigative journalism with the aim to make public the hidden costs of techno-capitalism. Back in 2013, her research began with an epiphany: services like Google do not come for free, without environmental costs. As her research has proven since then, not only does the internet have a huge impact on ecosystems, but e-commerce services, browsers, dating apps and surveillance systems extract data and energy from unwitting users. What happens when we purchase an item on Amazon? Who owns the profile images posted on dating apps? How many trees are needed to absorb the amount of CO2 generated by the global visits to google.com every second? Through the artistic outputs of her findings, Joana Moll transforms these revelations into tangible concepts fostering awareness in the collective consciousness of the footprint caused by our use of the Cloud.

Guests: Dušan Caf, director of the Digitas Institute for better digital accessibility; Luka Frelih, artist, programmer and hacker; Filip Muki Dobranić, hacker, philosopher, sociologist.

Watch this episode in video format > HERE
Read this conversation in book format > HERE

Suggested content:

[Essay] Analysis, Exposure and Addition: The Aesthetic and Ecological Logics of Joana Moll’s Carbolytics by Matthew Fuller, PostScriptUM #40, 2022

[Project] Carbolytics

[Essay]: Deep Carbon

[Project]: CO2GLE

[Website] Joana Moll

COLOPHON

Host: Marta Peirano
Guest: Joana Moll

Editing, Audio Mix and Music: Gašper Torkar

(re)programming podcast series

Produced by Janez Fakin Janša and Marcela Okretič
for Tactics&Practice #10: (re)programming

Project coordinator: Sonja Grdina

Production:
Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art
Ljubljana, 2023

Part of
Tactics&Practice
konS – Platform for Contemporary Investigative Art

The project konS – Platform for Contemporary Investigative Art was chosen on the public call for the selection of the operations “Network of Investigative Art and Culture Centres”. The investment is co-financed by the Republic of Slovenia and by the European Regional Development Fund of the European Union.

The post (re)programming | Ep. #6: The Cloud [w/ Joana Moll] appeared first on Aksioma.

Better Machines for Better Humans

Kate Crawford is a leading scholar on the social implications of artificial intelligence. Her book ATLAS OF AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence is the culmination of a five-year-long research into materiality of AI. Far from being immaterial, AI is made of flesh, sweat and fossil fuels, and is not neutral. Also, AI stands as one of the most concentrated industries of the world, with only five or six companies holding the pipelines of the data, designed to serve the capital, or for policing and for military purposes. Acquainting this is essential to resistance and change, because it’s by abstracting away the processes through which AI is made that the actual modes of production can persist. However, no political situation lasts forever and no technology is invulnerable: these planetary computational systems can be decentralised and become useful to humans and the planet.

Guests: Sanela Jahić, intermedia artist; Lenart J. Kučić, journalist and podcaster; Nika Mahnič, researcher of the digital condition(ality).

Watch this episode in video format > HERE
Read this conversation in book format > HERE

Suggested content:

[Installation]: Anatomy of an AI System

[Talk]: You and AI (The Royal Society)

[Website] Kate Crawford

COLOPHON

Host: Marta Peirano
Guest: Kate Crawford

Editing, Audio Mix and Music: Gašper Torkar

(re)programming podcast series

Produced by Janez Fakin Janša and Marcela Okretič
for Tactics&Practice #10: (re)programming

Project coordinator: Sonja Grdina

Production:
Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art
Ljubljana, 2023

Part of
Tactics&Practice
konS – Platform for Contemporary Investigative Art

The project konS – Platform for Contemporary Investigative Art was chosen on the public call for the selection of the operations “Network of Investigative Art and Culture Centres”. The investment is co-financed by the Republic of Slovenia and by the European Regional Development Fund of the European Union.

The post (re)programming | Ep. #5: AI [w/ Kate Crawford] appeared first on Aksioma.

Posthuman Politics

Future is not only about data and trends, it is about imagination. The work of designer and filmmaker Anab Jain transports people into the future. The evolving installation Mitigation of Shock by her studio Superflux envisions a random apartment in the London of 2050 or in a Singapore that has become a flooded city in 2219. In this conversation, Jain gives the listeners an emotional vade mecum to imagine and possibly shape the future, starting with equipping themselves with many options and possibilities in order to explore those prospects and interconnections, then asking which decisions that we are taking today may affect them in the future. As indicated in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, there is an urgency to reassess our relationship with what we call “nature” – we have to think of ourselves as one species among others, who are our companions.

Guests: Saša Spačal, post-media artist; Anja Planišček, associate professor at Faculty of Architecture, Ljubljana; Špela Petrič, new media artist and former scientific researcher.

Watch this episode in video format > HERE
Read this conversation in book format > HERE

Suggested content:

[Essay]: Calling for a More-Than-Human Politics

[Video]: Trigger Warning

[Website] Superflux

COLOPHON

Host: Marta Peirano
Guest: Anab Jain

Editing, Audio Mix and Music: Gašper Torkar

(re)programming podcast series

Produced by Janez Fakin Janša and Marcela Okretič
for Tactics&Practice #10: (re)programming

Project coordinator: Sonja Grdina

Production:
Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art
Ljubljana, 2023

Part of
Tactics&Practice
konS – Platform for Contemporary Investigative Art

The project konS – Platform for Contemporary Investigative Art was chosen on the public call for the selection of the operations “Network of Investigative Art and Culture Centres”. The investment is co-financed by the Republic of Slovenia and by the European Regional Development Fund of the European Union.

The post (re)programming | Ep. #4: Interdependence [w/ Anab Jain] appeared first on Aksioma.