Shows
Art Is Not a ThingComputational Compost: Against the Resource Intensivity of Data CentersSend us a textIn 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 BalberProducers: Ana-Maria Carabelea, Christopher Sonnleitner, Marlene GrinnerEditing: Hannah Balber, Ana-Maria CarabeleaMusic: Karl Ju...
2025-12-2921 min
Art Is Not a ThingSystem VulnerabilitySend us a textIn 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 BalberProducers: Ana-Maria Carabelea, Christopher Sonnleitner, Marlene GrinnerEditing: Hannah Balber, Ana-Maria CarabeleaMusic: Karl Julian Schmidinger
2025-11-3017 min
Art Is Not a ThingPost-truth Museums and Their Post-colonial DirectorsSend us a textIn 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 BalberProducers: Ana-Maria Carabelea, Christopher Sonnleitner, Marlene Grin...
2025-10-3122 min
Art Is Not a ThingImaginative Futuring for Social ChangeSend us a textIn 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...
2025-09-3020 min
Art Is Not a ThingRobotic Journeys through the AndesSend us a textIn 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...
2025-08-3120 min
Art Is Not a ThingOutsourcing Ethics: A Robot Speaks Our ViolenceSend us a textIn 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 BalberProducers: Ana-Maria Carabelea, Christopher Sonnleitner, Marlene GrinnerEditing: Hannah B...
2025-07-3118 min
Pastila de antreprenoriatPastila #49: Trump vrea tarife de 30% pentru UE + cât de profitabil e Beach, Please!Startarium prezintă: ➛ ȘTIRILE SĂPTĂMÂNII: Trump vrea o taxă vamală de 30% pe bunurile din UE ✦ Cât câștigă anual Selly și Gheorghe Carabelea, organizatorii Beach, Please! ✦ Volumul de investiții în Europa Centrală și de Est s-a dublat în 2024 ✦ Dedeman a cumpărat rețeaua Praktiker Hellas din Grecia ➛ DOZA DE INSPIRAȚIE: Panouri izolatoare din miceliu și zaț de cafea, made in Cluj: https://startarium.ro/articol/interviu-rongo-design-gabriel-barta-startup-miceliu➛ DOZA DE WELLBEING: Corina Chirileasa, psiholog clinician, coach acreditat și psihoterapeut în formare, te sfătuiește cu cine să vorbești atunci când ți-e greu în business. Și nu...
2025-07-1813 min
Art Is Not a ThingWeb of AI: Linking Homes and BattlefieldsSend us a textIn 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 BalberProducers: Ana-Maria Carabelea, Christopher Sonnleitner, Marlene GrinnerEditing: Hannah Balber, Ana-Maria CarabeleaMusic: Karl Julian SchmidingerArs Electronica:https://ars.electronica.art/https://www.instagram.com/arselectronica/
2025-06-3018 min
Art Is Not a ThingMaking Kin: Cells, Software, Synthetic SelvesSend us a textIn 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 FedericiTesto Junkie by Paul PreciadoHumanistic Narratives by Michel SerresThumbelina: the c...
2025-05-3136 min
Art Is Not a ThingTouching MemoriesSend us a textIn 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 VonnegutAudio-Vision: Sound on Screen by Michel ChionMultisensory Experiences: Where the senses meet technology by Carlos Velasco and Marianna Obrist When We Touch by Michael BanissyDigital Touch by Carey Jewitt and Sara Price
2025-04-3032 min
Art Is Not a ThingVirtually Real: Writing Transmedia SpacesSend us a textIn 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 GhoshDismantling the Master's Clock: On Race, Space and Time by Rasheedah PhillipsThe TESCREAL Bundle: Eugenics and the...
2025-03-3141 min
Art Is Not a ThingLabour in the Greenhouse: Reaping the Fruits of AutomationSend us a textGreenhouses 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 NeighboursWays of Being by James BridleLiving Labour (documentary) by Renzo Sgolacchia Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies: Migrant Farmworkers in the U...
2025-02-2740 min
Art Is Not a ThingComputation, Improvisation, NarrationSend us a textThe stories we tell about, with, or for technologies matter. Can we demystify misnomers such as artificial intelligence through storytelling, role-playing, and improvisation? In this episode, we talk to dmstfctn (Francesco Tacchini and Oliver Smith) and Lawrence Lek about how they build narratives around complex computational systems.Resources:The Tricks of the Trade by Dario FoDadda by Brood MaRole-play with large language models by M. Shanahan, K. McDonell & L. Reynolds Host & Producer: Ana-Maria CarabeleaEditing: Ana-Maria CarabeleaMusic: Karl J...
2025-01-3037 min
Art Is Not a ThingLove and the CitySend us a textWhat happens when our public behaviour is constantly monitored? Do we still hug, kiss, or allow ourselves to be vulnerable in public, does it stop us from being at our worst? In this episode, we talk to artist Noemi Iglesias Barrios and Guggenheim curator Noam Segal about surveillance systems in the public space and why we might want to 'measure' cities in terms of emotionality by training algorithms to search for signs of love on the streets.Resources:The Radicality of Love by Srećko Horvat T...
2024-11-3028 min
Art Is Not a ThingOperational HoaxesSend us a textIt’s easy to discard fakes and hoaxes as misinformation. But that might be too abrupt an ending to a discussion about the aesthetics of non-fact and the role of synthetic images in our visual landscape. In this episode, we talk to Martyna Marciniak and Jussi Parikka about synthetic images and their relationship to the material realities that (re-)/produce.Resources:The Eye of the Master by Matteo PasquinelliDoppelganger by Naomi KleinMaterial Witness by Susan SchuppliInto the White by Chris P. He...
2024-09-3033 min
Art Is Not a ThingThere's Hope at the Edges of PowerSend us a textIn today's episode, we talk to Meredith Whittaker of Signal and artist Calin Segal about what surveillance and the concentration of power in the hands of a few tech companies mean for society. We discuss the context that made it possible for these companies to capture data without regard for privacy and use it to produce new social, cultural, and political dynamics. At the edges of what looks like an inescapable panopticon society, we find hope in the role of art, research, critical thinking, and organisations that prove “none of this is na...
2024-07-3136 min
Art Is Not a ThingRegendering TechnologySend us a textIn this episode, we look at the historical entanglements of technology and gender. Made in the image of their (often male) designers, technologies end up serving and reproducing patriarchal systems. How can technology finally "undergo a sex change" to overcome its current gender inscriptions? What political imaginaries make that possible, or become possible through feminist approaches to technology? Host Ana-Maria Carabelea tries to answer these questions in conversation with Professor Judy Wajcman and visual and multimedia artist Silvia Binda.Resources:Baltan Laboratories, Technology OtherwiseData Feminism by...
2024-05-3133 min
Art Is Not a ThingTruth PreachersSend us a textThe changes in how information is collected, produced, and disseminated leave their mark on the way information is consumed. This episode unpacks the qualitative shifts the algorithmic dissemination of information has brought to the media landscape and how in turn that affects citizens and their engagement with the democratic processes. We talk to Marta Peirano, Nina Jankowicz & Fabian Scheidler about how mis- and disinformation alter the societal fabric and what the future of journalism holds.Resources:The Social DilemmaThe Facebook Dilemma Joy Buolamwini - Algorithmic...
2024-03-2032 min
Art Is Not a ThingTruth Makers (Part I)Send us a textIn this episode, we discuss how machine learning and artificial intelligence adopt hegemonic discourse and existing biases and, what’s more, amplify them, and we talk to some of the people out there who are fighting back. Our guests are Kasia Chmielinski (they/them) - Co-Founder of the Data Nutrition Project, an initiative that builds tools to mitigate bias in artificial intelligence - and Ndapewa Onyothi Wilhelmina Nekoto - an independent researcher & community builder, part of Masakhane. Resources:QT.bot - Si...
2024-01-3042 min
Art Is Not a ThingTruth Makers (Part II)Send us a textIn this episode, we discuss how the data sets used in machine learning adopt hegemonic discourse and existing biases and, what’s more, amplify them, and we talk to some of the people out there who are fighting back. Our guest is Angie Abdilla - a palawa woman, founder, and director of Old Ways, New, whose methodology Country Centred Design, utilises Indigenous knowledges in the design of places, experiences, and critical technologies. Resources:Atlas of AI but Kate CrawfordOut of the Black Bo...
2024-01-3027 min
Art Is Not a ThingData LordsSend us a textIn this episode, we unpack the ownership and production of data that feeds today's hungry algorithms. What has thus far been described as a process of extraction reveals itself more and more as production. We talk to artist, filmmaker, and writer Hito Steyerl and award-winning journalist Karen Hao about the hidden labour behind the so-called data 'extraction', its appropriation through practices reminiscent of colonialism, and what needs to change for the AI industry to stop perpetuating harmful practices in which data is yet another commons turned into a commodity....
2023-11-2826 min
Art Is Not a ThingIntro EpisodeSend us a textIn this short episode, host Ana-Maria Carabelea introduces The Digital Deal Podcast (currently Art Is Not a Thing) and the reasons and visions that drive it.The Digital Deal Podcast is part of the European Digital Deal a three-year investigation into the accelerated and often unconsidered adoption of new technologies and their impact on society. The Digital Deal Podcast, invites artists, cultural critics and theorists, and AI experts to discuss how new technologies reshape our democracies and help us make sense of these changes. Host & Producer...
2023-11-2107 min