The Culture & Technology Podcast

Margarete Jahrmann is a ludic artist and artistic researcher, drawer and writer, full university professor and head of the 2021 newly founded Experimental Game Cultures department at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. As an artist and writer she regularly publishes and exhibits artworks dealing with play, the ludic method and neurosciences.

In this episode, Margarete and Severin discuss her pioneering "ludic method"—using games and play as experimental research tools to investigate everything from collective memory to brain activity to AI-generated realities. Jahrmann explains how lying on examination beds while playing cooperative card games with EEG helmets reveals that humans perceive reality differently based on social situations—even before conscious thought—and argues that games aren't just objects to study but vehicles for connecting neuroscience, philosophy, art, and technology.

GUEST

Margarete Jahrmann, is a ludic artist and artistic researcher, drawer and writer, full university professor and head of the 2021 newly founded Department EXPERIMENTAL GAME CULTURE at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. As PI she launches 2023 The Psycholudic Approach (FWF/PEEK) and led the 2021-2023 the interdisciplinary project Neuromatic Game Art: critical play with neurointerfaces (FWF/ PEEK). She curates international game art exhibitions and supports artists and researchers in projects such as 2023-2024 “NEST. XenoLudic games and nonhuman intelligence” with Tamás Páll Hollow Group. Currently, she curates international exhibitions with students for AMAZE and hosts international Ludic Method Soirées.

HOST

Severin Matusek is a cultural theorist and founder of co—matter, a creative studio exploring the cultural and societal impact of new technologies.

IDEAS AND PEOPLE IN CONTEXT

CREDITS

The Vienna Business Agency supports new companies, projects and products that develop Vienna's creative industries further. Find out more at viennabusinessagency.at.

Theme Music by Hell Mutang.

In this episode, Libby takes us through quantum's non-binary, multidimensional properties. From creating VR experiences that helped her process her sister's death to working with slime as a material that breaks down binaries, Libby challenges our Western, rational way of seeing the world. She explores how quantum computing can generate new aesthetics through superposition (multiple realities existing simultaneously), why embracing the unknowable is crucial for reimagining alternatives to capitalism and anthropocentrism, and how "quantum feeling"—rather than quantum thinking—might help us move beyond the flattening effects of big tech.

GUEST

Libby Heaney (GB) is a British artist who holds a PhD in Quantum Information Science and an MA in Art and Science. Recent solo exhibitions include Quantum Soup, HEK Basel (2024); Heartbreak and Magic, Somerset House, London (2024) and Ent-, LAS Art Foundation, Berlin (2022). Her first artistic monograph was recently published by Hatje Cantz. Heaney’s project Ent- won the Lumen Prize and the Falling Walls Art-Science Prize (both 2022) and she was awarded the 2022 Mozilla Foundation Creative Media Award.

HOST

Severin Matusek is a cultural theorist and founder of co—matter, a creative studio exploring the cultural and societal impact of new technologies.

IDEAS AND PEOPLE IN CONTEXT

CREDITS

The Vienna Business Agency supports new companies, projects and products that develop Vienna's creative industries further. Find out more at viennabusinessagency.at.

Theme Music by Hell Mutang.

Bernhard Günther is a cultural manager, curator, musicologist and the artistic director of Wien Modern, one of the world's largest contemporary music festivals held in Vienna since 1988. As a passionate visitor and organizer of concerts across diverse genres and formats, and as an occasional musician, he has been intensively engaged with new music and its context for over 25 years.

In this episode, Bernhard and Severin discuss how Wien Modern evolved from its 1980s origins as a response to Vienna's nostalgic classical music scene into a deliberately confusing, friction-generating platform that challenges narrow definitions of what contemporary music can be. Günther explores the festival's 2025 theme "The Great Learning," which responds to Vienna's 37% population growth and increasing diversity by actively addressing questions of representation, discrimination, and who gets heard in classical music spaces. He discusses the tension between data-driven curation and human taste, why festivals must resist becoming "elite things," the dangers of AI in understanding discrimination, and why bringing people together to physically experience music—even when it provokes disagreement—matters more than ever in an age when social media promised connection but delivered polarization instead.

GUEST

Bernhard Günther is a cultural manager, curator, musicologist and the artistic director of Wien Modern, one of the world's largest contemporary music festivals held in Vienna since 1988. As a passionate visitor and organizer of concerts across diverse genres and formats, and as an occasional musician, he has been intensively engaged with new music and its context for over 25 years.

HOST

Severin Matusek is a cultural theorist and founder of co—matter, a creative studio exploring the cultural and societal impact of new technologies.

IDEAS AND PEOPLE IN CONTEXT

CREDITS

The Vienna Business Agency supports new companies, projects and products that develop Vienna's creative industries further. Find out more at viennabusinessagency.at.

Editorial & Production Team (in alphabetical order): Carina Dala, Severin Matusek, Elisabeth Noever-Ginthör, Alice Smith, Heinz Wolf

Theme Music by Hell Mutang.

GUEST

Simon Denny, MNZM (b. 1982 Auckland) lives and works in Berlin. He makes artworks that unpack stories about technology using painting, web-based media, installation, sculpture, print and video. He serves as a Professor of Time-Based Media since 2018 at The Hochschule für bildende Künste (HFBK), Hamburg and co-founded the artist mentoring program BPA//Berlin Program for Artists in 2016.

HOST

Severin Matusek is a writer and founder of co—matter, a research and strategy studio exploring the cultural and societal impact of new technologies.

IDEAS AND PEOPLE IN CONTEXT

Forces of the Unknown, Simon Denny exhibition, JW Marriott Hotel, Berlin https://simondenny.net/press/forces-of-the-unknown-simon-denny-on-the-militarized-imagination-and-power-of-plotter-paintings/

Netscape, first major commercial web browser (early 1990s) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape_Navigator

"Software Will Eat the World", Marc Andreessen (2011) https://a16z.com/why-software-is-eating-the-world/

"The Techno Optimist Manifesto", Marc Andreessen (2023) https://a16z.com/the-techno-optimist-manifesto/

First Futurist Manifesto, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1909) https://archive.org/details/FuturistManifesto

"Silicon Valley's Entering Its Hard Tech Era", New York Times (July 2025) https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/04/technology/ai-silicon-valley-hard-tech.html

"The Technological Republic", Alex Karp book https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Technological-Republic-Power-Belief-Future/dp/0593798694

The Founder's Paradox, Simon Denny exhibition, Michael Lett Gallery, Auckland (2017) https://simondenny.net/the-founders-paradox-cleveland/

Security Through Obscurity, Simon Denny exhibition, Altman Siegel, San Francisco (2020) https://simondenny.net/security-through-obscurity/

Extractor, Simon Denny board game / catalogue https://simondenny.net/extractor-publication/

DLD (Digital Life Design), tech conference, Munich https://www.dld-conference.com/

"What is Post AI Art", Art Review (November 2025) https://artreview.com/what-is-post-ai-art-avery-singer-simon-denny-holly-herndon-mat-dryhurst-jon-rafman/

CREDITS

The Vienna Business Agency supports new companies, projects and products that develop Vienna's creative industries further. Find out more at viennabusinessagency.at.

Theme Music by Hell Mutang.

In this episode, Günseli discusses her concept of 'internet folklore,' which connects advanced technologies with cultural practices like folklore and mythmaking. The conversation delves into the ways internet culture influences society, the impact of AI on human interaction and creativity, and the emerging significance of quantum culture. Severin and Günseli also explore her collaborative AV performances and the intriguing parallels between AI and psychedelia.

GUEST

Günseli Yalcinkaya is an artist, curator and writer based in London, with a particular focus on online culture and advanced technologies. She is a Contributing Editor at Dazed and the former host of Dazed podcast, Logged On. She has appeared in talks and panels at the Architectural Association, BFI, Somerset House, Sónar+D, Serpentine Galleries, Unsound Festival, Vienna Digital Cultures and X Museum. Her essays have been published in CURA, Dazed Magazine, Spike Art, Vogue, Zora Zine and 032c, as well as in books for Aksioma, Julia Stoschek and LAS Art Foundation.

HOST

Severin Matusek is a cultural theorist and founder of co—matter, a creative studio exploring the cultural and societal impact of new technologies.

IDEAS AND PEOPLE IN CONTEXT

CREDITS

The Vienna Business Agency supports new companies, projects and products that develop Vienna's creative industries further. Find out more at viennabusinessagency.at.

Editorial & Production Team (in alphabetical order): Carina Dala, Severin Matusek, Elisabeth Noever-Ginthör, Alice Smith, Heinz Wolf

Theme Music by Hell Mutang.

In this episode, Mercedes and Severin discuss how AI represents a fundamentally different technological shift from previous digital revolutions. She demystifies how large language models actually work, explores why we need public AI and open data sets to counter corporate dominance, and challenges the binary thinking around AI—neither savior nor devil—arguing that our fear of machines replacing human work is actually masking deeper anxieties about an out-of-control financial system.

GUEST

Mercedes Bunz is Professor of Digital Culture and Society at King's College London's Department of Digital Humanities, where she researches how digital technology transforms knowledge, communication, power, and society. Author of "The Silent Revolution" (2012), an early exploration of how algorithms shape our world, she co-founded the Creative AI Lab with Serpentine Gallery to help artists engage critically with AI technologies on their own terms. She also co-founded meson.press, an open-access digital publishing initiative, and advocates for demystifying technology so critical thinkers—rather than just profit-seekers—shape its development.

HOST

Severin Matusek is a cultural theorist and founder of co—matter, a creative studio exploring the cultural and societal impact of new technologies.

IDEAS AND PEOPLE IN CONTEXT

CREDITS

The Vienna Business Agency supports new companies, projects and products that develop Vienna's creative industries further. Find out more at http://viennabusinessagency.at.

Editorial & Production Team (in alphabetical order): Carina Dala, Severin Matusek, Elisabeth Noever-Ginthör, Alice Smith, Heinz Wolf.

Theme Music by Hell Mutang.

GUEST

HOST

IDEAS AND PEOPLE IN CONTEXT

CREDITS

Editorial & Production Team (in alphabetical order): Carina Dala, Mike Evans, Nick Houde, Kesia Inkersole, Severin Matusek, Elisabeth Noever-Ginthör, Alice Smith, Heinz Wolf

Theme Music by Hell Mutang.

Rebecca Merlic is a European digital artist and architect, experimental filmmaker, and senior scientist at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. She creates virtual, interactively experienceable spaces and situations—not merely as portals from the real to the digital world, but as gateways inclusive representation that can only be discovered in the fluid negotiability of virtual worlds.

In this episode, Severin is joined by Rebecca to discuss her project Kissaten Vienna, a documentation of vanishing coffee house cultures across Vienna, Japan, and Zagreb using 3D scanning and game engines. Together, they explore how emerging technologies can document and reimagine traditional social spaces while raising questions about accessibility and preservation.

GUEST

Rebecca Merlic is a European digital artist and architect, experimental filmmaker, and senior scientist at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. She is the holder of the Marianne von Willemer Prize 2020 for digital media, DKB VR Art Prize winner 2023 as well as Content Vienna winner and the holder of Theodor-Körner prize for art and science 2023.

HOST

Severin Matusek is a cultural theorist and founder of co—matter, a research & strategy studio exploring the cultural and societal impact of new technologies.

IDEAS & PEOPLE IN CONTEXT

CREDITS

The Vienna Business Agency supports new companies, projects and products that develop Vienna's creative industries further. Find out more at viennabusinessagency.at

Editorial & Production Team (in alphabetical order): Carina Dala, Mike Evans, Nick Houde, Kesia Inkersole, Severin Matusek, Elisabeth Noever-Ginthör, Alice Smith, Heinz Wolf

Theme Music by Hell Mutang.

Claire L. Evans is a writer and musician based in Los Angeles. She is the founding editor of Terraform, VICE's science-fiction vertical, and author of Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet.

In this episode, Claire and Severin explore how emerging technologies — from biocomputing to xenobots — are reshaping our understanding of the natural world. Severin and Claire dive into the interconnected world of life sciences and computation, exploring what we can learn from systems like ant colonies, slime molds, and evolutionary algorithms.

GUEST

Claire L. Evans is a writer and musician exploring biology, technology, and culture. Her 2018 history of women in computing, Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet, published by Penguin Random House, has been translated into six languages and was named one of the Top 10 Best Nonfiction Tech Books of All Time in 2023.

HOST

Severin Matusek is a cultural theorist and founder of co—matter, a research & strategy studio exploring the cultural and societal impact of new technologies.

IDEAS & PEOPLE IN CONTEXT

CREDITS

The Vienna Business Agency supports new companies, projects and products that develop Vienna's creative industries further. Find out more at viennabusinessagency.at

Editorial & Production Team (in alphabetical order): Carina Dala, Mike Evans, Nick Houde, Kesia Inkersole, Severin Matusek, Elisabeth Noever-Ginthör, Alice Smith, Heinz Wolf

Theme Music by Hell Mutang.

Claudia Larcher is an artist exploring AI bias and representation through her work "AI and the Art of Historical Reinterpretation", a growing fictional image archive of history, reinterpreting the past with inclusivity and diversity.

Claudia shares her artistic approach of injecting diverse representations into AI training data as a form of activism to highlight opportunities in an era of rapid technological change.

GUEST

Her work spans video animation, collage, photography, and installation, with a focus on the impacts and experimental uses of artificial intelligence.

HOST

Severin Matusek is a cultural theorist and founder of co—matter, a creative studio exploring the cultural and societal impact of new technologies.

IDEAS AND PEOPLE IN CONTEXT

CREDITS

Editorial & Production Team (in alphabetical order): Carina Dala, Mike Evans, Nick Houde, Kesia Inkersole, Severin Matusek, Elisabeth Noever-Ginthör, Alice Smith, Heinz Wolf.

Theme Music by Hell Mutang.