Art Is Not a Thing

When did we start trusting AI-generated rumours?

In today’s episode, host Hannah Balber discusses rumors, power, and the way narratives are crafted, manipulated, and distorted: from the political intrigues of the Mughal court to today’s AI-driven media environment. Our guest is the Indian-American artist and researcher Parag Mital. His recent project, The Game of Whispers, is an interactive and generative artwork that creates a society of autonomous AI characters whose speech, alliances, and conflicts evolve through their actions and interactions. This episode of Art Is Not a Thing is produced by Ars Electronica and developed in collaboration with Radio Ö1. Host: Hannah Balber Producers: Ana-Maria Carabelea, Christopher Sonnleitner, Marlene Grinner Editing: Yazdan Zand Music: Karl Julian Schmidinger Ars Electronica: https://ars.electronica.art/ https://www.instagram.com/arselectronica/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/arselectronica Resources: Parag K Mital

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Can Humans and Fungi Design Together?

In today’s episode, host Hannah Balber discusses the agency and design capabilities of fungi with our guest Feifei Zhou. Feifei is an architect and artist who co-curated Fungi. Anarchist Designers together with anthropologist Anna Tsing. The exhibition asks what happens when we stop thinking of fungi as materials or resources and instead recognize them as designers and try to learn from them about coexistence and survival, especially in time of ecological crisis. This episode of Art Is Not a Thing is produced by Ars Electronica and developed in collaboration with Radio Ö1. Host: Hannah Balber Producers: Ana-Maria Carabelea, Christopher Sonnleitner, Marlene Grinner Editing: Yazdan Zand Music: Karl Julian Schmidinger Ars Electronica: https://ars.electronica.art/ https://www.instagram.com/arselectronica/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/arselectronica Resources: Feifei Zhou Fungi. Anarchist Designers terriStories

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Could Your Future Kin Be an Avatar?

In today’s episode, host Hannah Balber discusses digital doubles, identity and a new kind of technological theater with Finnish media artist Hanna Haaslahti. Her most recent work, Ancestors focuses on exploring the narrative possibilities of digital doubles. In an immersive room, AI-generated versions of the visitors begin to reproduce with one another. The work raises questions about identity, individualism, and kinship in the future. This episode of Art Is Not a Thing is produced by Ars Electronica and developed in collaboration with Radio Ö1. Host: Hannah Balber Producers: Ana-Maria Carabelea, Christopher Sonnleitner, Marlene Grinner Editing: Yazdan Zand Music: Karl Julian Schmidinger Ars Electronica: https://ars.electronica.art/ https://www.instagram.com/arselectronica/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/arselectronica Resources: Hanna Haaslahti

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Has the internet always been sexy?

This episode kicks off a new season, produced in cooperation with Radio Ö1–Austria’s leading cultural voice. Today, radio journalist Hannah Balber from Radio Ö1 talks to American artist and technologist Mindy Seu about sex and its influence on the internet. Mindy’s work combines archival research on cyberfeminism, online communities, and the histories embedded in the web with experimental forms of publishing and lecturing, questioning how digital infrastructures shape power, identity and knowledge. Art Is Not a Thing is produced by Ars Electronica and developed in collaboration with Radio Ö1. Host: Hannah Balber Producers: Ana-Maria Carabelea, Christopher Sonnleitner, Marlene Grinner Editing: Yazdan Zand Music: Karl Julian Schmidinger Ars Electronica: https://ars.electronica.art/ https://www.instagram.com/arselectronica/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/arselectronica Resources: A Sexual History of the Internet

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Quantum Uncertainty in a Capitalist Reality

In this episode, host Ana-Maria Carabelea is joined by artist Libby Heaney. Libby’s work engages quantum processes as active constraints that undo linear causality, hierarchical relations, and the bounded subject. After a crash course into key concepts, they discuss the potential and limitations of quantum to challenge existing social and political paradigms by proposing new modes of knowledge production. Host: Ana-Maria Carabelea Producers: Ana-Maria Carabelea, Christopher Sonnleitner, Marlene Grinner Editing: Yazdan Zand Music: Karl Julian Schmidinger Ars Electronica: https://ars.electronica.art/ https://www.instagram.com/arselectronica/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/arselectronica Resources: https://libbyheaney.co.uk/

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Succumbing to the Machine: Desire in the Age of AI

In this episode, host Ana-Maria Carabelea is joined by artist Erin Robinson. Her work, XXX Machina, operates as an autonomous desire machine that generates an endless stream of synthetic erotic imagery. They discuss desire, eroticism, human intimacy, and corporeality from Lacan and Bataille, all the way to today's shift brought by artificial intelligence. Host: Ana-Maria Carabelea Producers: Ana-Maria Carabelea, Christopher Sonnleitner, Marlene Grinner Editing: Yazdan Zand Music: Karl Julian Schmidinger Ars Electronica: https://ars.electronica.art/ https://www.instagram.com/arselectronica/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/arselectronica Resources: Erotics of the Synthetic Self: Fragmentation, Excess, and the Automation of Desire in XXX Machina

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Challenging VR's Procrustean Bed: Disability, Tactile Epistemologies, Worldbuilding

In this episode, host Ana-Maria Carabelea is joined by artist Iz Paehr to talk about inherently ableist technologies. Their work Feeling Virtual: An Archive of Touch looks at how digital technologies can be used to make cultural heritage more accessible. Challenging the sensorial hierarchies and ableist assumptions built into XR technologies, Iz explores the potential of touch and disabled ways of knowing the world around. Host: Ana-Maria Carabelea Producers: Ana-Maria Carabelea, Christopher Sonnleitner, Marlene Grinner Editing: Yazdan Zand Music: Karl Julian Schmidinger Ars Electronica: https://ars.electronica.art/ https://www.instagram.com/arselectronica/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/arselectronica Resources: Tactile Descriptions: A Workbook

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Anthropocene Oscillations

In this episode, host Ana-Maria Carabelea is joined by researcher and lecturer Alex Damianos and architect John Palmesino of Territorial Agency. Two years after the Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy's decision to reject the proposal to recognise the Anthropocene as a geological unit, they discuss where the Anthropocene is today and where the debates are heading. Host: Ana-Maria Carabelea Producers: Ana-Maria Carabelea, Christopher Sonnleitner, Marlene Grinner Editing: Ana-Maria Carabelea Music: Karl Julian Schmidinger Ars Electronica: https://ars.electronica.art/ https://www.instagram.com/arselectronica/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/arselectronica Territorial Agency Dr Alexander Damianos

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The Politics of Seeing and Being Seen

Using both the conditions and limitations of the photographic medium, Trevor Paglen's investigations into state surveillance, military operations, and data collection raise questions about truth, deception, and imagination. In this episode, Hannah Balber talks to the American photographer, author, and geographer about UFOs, psyops, the power of manipulation, and how seeing and being seen are deeply political. Art Is Not a Thing is produced by Ars Electronica and developed in collaboration with Radio Ö1. Host: Hannah Balber Producers: Ana-Maria Carabelea, Christopher Sonnleitner, Marlene Grinner Editing: Hannah Balber, Ana-Maria Carabelea Music: Karl Julian Schmidinger Ars Electronica: https://ars.electronica.art/ https://www.instagram.com/arselectronica/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/arselectronica Trevor Paglen

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Computational Compost: Against the Resource Intensivity of Data Centers

In this episode, Hanna Balber talks with architect Marina Otero Verzier about the environmental cost of data centres. Challenging the image of the 'cloud' as an immaterial entity, her project, Computational Compost, uses heat from computer servers to power a vermi-composting machine, thus imagining a potential symbiotic relationship between digital technology and nature. Art Is Not a Thing is produced by Ars Electronica and developed in collaboration with Radio Ö1. Host: Hannah Balber Producers: Ana-Maria Carabelea, Christopher Sonnleitner, Marlene Grinner Editing: Hannah Balber, Ana-Maria Carabelea Music: Karl Julian Schmidinger Ars Electronica: https://ars.electronica.art/ https://www.instagram.com/arselectronica/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/arselectronica Marina Otero Verzier

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System Vulnerability

In this episode, Hannah talks to German media artist Simon Weckert about the societal impacts of digitalisation and his artistic strategies to disrupt, redirect, or reduce the logic of systems to absurdity. His work points to the vulnerability of allegedly infallible digital systems and the risks of relying on them. Art Is Not a Thing is produced by Ars Electronica and developed in collaboration with Radio Ö1. Host: Hannah Balber Producers: Ana-Maria Carabelea, Christopher Sonnleitner, Marlene Grinner Editing: Hannah Balber, Ana-Maria Carabelea Music: Karl Julian Schmidinger Ars Electronica: https://ars.electronica.art/ https://www.instagram.com/arselectronica/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/arselectronica Simon Weckert

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Post-truth Museums and Their Post-colonial Directors

In this episode, Hannah Balber talks to German-Iraqi artist Nora Al-Badri about the colonial inscriptions borne by Europe’s cultural heritage. Her work, The Post-truth Museum, reignites seemingly irresolvable debates about restitution. In glitchy deepfakes, the artist puts postcolonial theory in the mouths of former museum directors (rather than institutional discourse), in an attempt to signal where discussions of restitution need to start. Art Is Not a Thing is produced by Ars Electronica and developed in collaboration with Radio Ö1. Host: Hannah Balber Producers: Ana-Maria Carabelea, Christopher Sonnleitner, Marlene Grinner Editing: Hannah Balber, Ana-Maria Carabelea Music: Karl Julian Schmidinger Ars Electronica: https://ars.electronica.art/ https://www.instagram.com/arselectronica/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/arselectronica Nora Al-Badri The Post-truth Museum

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Imaginative Futuring for Social Change

In this episode, Hannah talks to members of the Kairos Futura collective from Nairobi, Ajax Axe, Abdul Rop and Willie Ng'ang'a. Their project, The Wild Future Lab, won this year's S+T+ARTS Prize Africa, an initiative of the European Commission, recognising pioneering projects in Africa that catalyse social change by blending science, technology, and art. The Wild Future Lab not only creates a blueprint for the future but tries to build that future with resources available in the present. Art Is Not a Thing is produced by Ars Electronica and developed in collaboration with Radio Ö1. Host: Hannah Balber Producers: Ana-Maria Carabelea, Christopher Sonnleitner, Marlene Grinner Editing: Hannah Balber, Ana-Maria Carabelea Music: Karl Julian Schmidinger Ars Electronica: https://ars.electronica.art/ https://www.instagram.com/arselectronica/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/arselectronica Kairos Futura https://www.thefutureisonearth.org/

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Robotic Journeys through the Andes

In this episode, Hannah talks to Golden Nica winner Paula Gaetano Adi about Guanaquerx, the first robot in history to cross the Andes Mountains. More than a technical object, Guanaquerx is a poetic, political, and collective operation that was two years in the making, involved a transdisciplinary team and fused ancestral knowledge with contemporary robotic technologies. Its symbolic crossing of the Andes hints at a new kind of revolution, one that brings about alternative technological futures. Art Is Not a Thing is produced by Ars Electronica and developed in collaboration with Radio Ö1. Host: Hannah Balber Producers: Ana-Maria Carabelea, Christopher Sonnleitner, Marlene Grinner Editing: Hannah Balber, Ana-Maria Carabelea Music: Karl Julian Schmidinger Ars Electronica: https://ars.electronica.art/ https://www.instagram.com/arselectronica/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/arselectronica Paula Gaetano Adi https://www.paulagaetanoadi.com/

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Outsourcing Ethics: A Robot Speaks Our Violence

In the podcast episode, Hannah talks to artists Thomas Kvam and Frode Oldereid about their installation Requiem for an Exit - a piece featuring a towering robot delivering a haunting monologue about the darker side of humanity. The piece confronts audiences with the enduring legacy of human violence and the ethical responsibilities humans outsource to bureaucratic and technological structures. Art Is Not a Thing is produced by Ars Electronica and developed in collaboration with Radio Ö1. Host: Hannah Balber Producers: Ana-Maria Carabelea, Christopher Sonnleitner, Marlene Grinner Editing: Hannah Balber, Ana-Maria Carabelea Music: Karl Julian Schmidinger Ars Electronica: https://ars.electronica.art/ https://www.instagram.com/arselectronica/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/arselectronica Thomas Kvam & Frode Oldereid https://www.oldereid-kvam.com/

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Web of AI: Linking Homes and Battlefields

In today's episode, we talk to Sarah Ciston about their award-winning project, AI War Cloud Database. The project visualises the links between everyday life technologies and military infrastructure, and reflects on the increasing automation of war. Art Is Not a Thing is produced by Ars Electronica and developed in collaboration with Radio Ö1. Host: Hannah Balber Producers: Ana-Maria Carabelea, Christopher Sonnleitner, Marlene Grinner Editing: Hannah Balber, Ana-Maria Carabelea Music: Karl Julian Schmidinger Ars Electronica: https://ars.electronica.art/ https://www.instagram.com/arselectronica/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/arselectronica Sarah Ciston: https://sarahciston.com/ https://www.instagram.com/sarahciston/

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Making Kin: Cells, Software, Synthetic Selves

In today’s episode, we are joined by artists Charlotte Jarvis and Zoran Srdić Janežič, and writer, educator, and curator Rick Dolphijn to discuss entities at the intersection of wetware, software, and hardware, and how they challenge our definitions of life, reproduction, parenthood, or care. Resources: Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family by Sophie Lewis Beyond the Periphery of the Skin: Rethinking, Remaking, and Reclaiming the Body in Contemporary Capitalism by Silvia Federici Testo Junkie by Paul Preciado Humanistic Narratives by Michel Serres Thumbelina: the culture and technology of millennials by Michel Serres The Posthuman by Rosi Braidotti Posthuman Feminism by Rosi Braidotti Staying with the Trouble by Donna Haraway The Philosophy of Matter: A Meditation by Rick Dolphijn Revivification (Exhibition) by Guy Ben-Ary, Nathan Thompson and Matt Gingold Ani Liu Ai Hasegawa Errorarium by Adam Zaretsky (later edits, suggested by Zoran Srdić Janežič) The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin Dune by Frank Herbert Southern Reach Series by Jeff VanderMeer Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky Children of Memory by Adrian Tchaikovsky Host & Producer: Ana-Maria Carabelea Editing: Ana-Maria Carabelea Music: Karl Julian Schmidinger The Digital Deal Podcast (currently Art Is Not a Thing) was part of European Digital Deal, a project co-funded by Creative Europe and the Austrian Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, the Civil Service and Sport. Views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the host and guests only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) can be held responsible for them.

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Touching Memories

In this episode, host Ana Carabelea talks to Yulia Sion, Nuno Correia, and Michael Banissy about the power of haptics and sound in recreating and conveying memories, as a way to build empathy and bridge generational gaps in the digital age. Resources: The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen by Michel Chion Multisensory Experiences: Where the senses meet technology by Carlos Velasco and Marianna Obrist When We Touch by Michael Banissy Digital Touch by Carey Jewitt and Sara Price Host & Producer: Ana-Maria Carabelea Editing: Ana-Maria Carabelea Music: Karl Julian Schmidinger The Digital Deal Podcast (currently Art Is Not a Thing) was part of European Digital Deal, a project co-funded by Creative Europe and the Austrian Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, the Civil Service and Sport. Views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the host and guests only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) can be held responsible for them.

Virtually Real: Writing Transmedia Spaces

In this episode we talk to Lara Lesmes + Fredrik Hellberg of Space Popular, Pierre Christophe Gam, and Brooklyn J. Pakathi about spaces - private, public, real, virtual, but most importantly transmedia spaces that confuse these definitions and open us to different ways of inhabiting spaces, interacting with one another, performing rituals, or building communities. Resources: The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis by Amitav Ghosh Dismantling the Master's Clock: On Race, Space and Time by Rasheedah Phillips The TESCREAL Bundle: Eugenics and the Promise of Utopia through Artificial General Intelligence by Timnit Gebru and Émile P. Torres Host & Producer: Ana-Maria Carabelea Editing: Ana-Maria Carabelea Music: Karl Julian Schmidinger The Digital Deal Podcast (currently Art Is Not a Thing) was part of European Digital Deal, a project co-funded by Creative Europe and the Austrian Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, the Civil Service and Sport. Views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the host and guests only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) can be held responsible for them.

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Labour in the Greenhouse: Reaping the Fruits of Automation

Greenhouses are sites of encounter between humans, plants, and machines, as well as socio-economic and geopolitical regimes. Within them, intricate stories of our day-to-day food production are weaved out of both visible and invisible threads. In this episode, we talk to artists Špela Petrič and Penelope Cain, and doctoral researcher Carolien Lubberhuizen about the intricacies these spaces hold. Resources: Seasonal Matters Rural Relations — Seasonal Neighbours Ways of Being by James Bridle Living Labour (documentary) by Renzo Sgolacchia Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies: Migrant Farmworkers in the United States by Seth Holmes Awkward Intimacies by Agnieszka Anna Wołodźko & Špela Petrič Host & Producer: Ana-Maria Carabelea Editing: Ana-Maria Carabelea Music: Karl Julian Schmidinger The Digital Deal Podcast (currently Art Is Not a Thing) was part of European Digital Deal, a project co-funded by Creative Europe and the Austrian Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, the Civil Service and Sport. Views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the host and guests only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) can be held responsible for them.

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