Shows
Disintegrator33. After Us (w/ Émile P. Torres)We're back to our regularly-scheduled Disintegrator programming! We've been hard at work on our book (buy it, wtf!) but have a number of killer episodes queued up for release.Émile P. Torres is a philosopher of the end times. You'll most likely associate their name (and that of collaborator Timnit Gebru) with developing the acronym TESCREAL, a grab-bag of ideologies that undergird the romance between venture capital and Silicon Valley. We strongly recommend their podcast Dystopia Now! (w/ Kate Willett) and their newest book Human Extinction: A History of the Science and Ethics of Annihilation.The T...2025-06-3050 min
DisintegratorVESPERS Pt. 2 (w/ Millaze)CW: eating disorders are discussed a few times in this episode.Vespers is a limited series within Disintegrator that focuses on the creative feedback loops between music and social media. It follows from the Nobody Listens to Music Anymore superlecture, where themes of youth identity formation, reference-as-medium, generative AI, and the complexities of working with the total archive are discussed in more detail.For this episode, we're joined by Millaze -- an iconic face and musical voice on Instagram. We talk about love, cringe, the open-endedness of her craft (we barely scratch the surface here), and...2025-06-121h 26
DisintegratorVESPERS Pt. 1 (w/ RayonBase)Vespers is a limited series within Disintegrator that focuses on the creative feedback loops between music and social media. It follows from the Nobody Listens to Music Anymore superlecture, where themes of youth identity formation, reference-as-medium, generative AI, and the complexities of working with the total archive are discussed in more detail.For this episode, we're joined by RayonBase. If you've opened TikTok or Instagram over the past few years, you recognize RayonBase's face, voice, instrumental composition, and video editing style. This is an open-ended conversation about character, craft, love, innocence, and the future. 2025-05-2748 min
Disintegrator32. I Put a Post on You (w/ Dana Dawud, feat. Open Secret)Artist and curator Dana Dawud joins Disintegrator to talk about Open Secret, her touring platform for internet cinema, and her evolving film series Monad. We discuss the blur as a visual device and trend, the impossibility of representing Palestine, being trained by AI and building myth in the age of the feed. The audio is laced with reflections by collaborators orbiting Open Secret: redactedcut @redactedcut, Palais Sinclaire @palais.sinclaire, Mischa Dols @mischaapje, 0nty @the.ontological.turnt, Angel Kether @user_goes_to_kether. References mentioned:Gore Layer by Alex Quicho in Spike (July 2024): https...2025-05-201h 22
Disintegrator31. Incarnation (w/ Pete Wolfendale)We’re joined by philosopher Peter Wolfendale — a singular voice in contemporary theory, known for his work on autonomy and the metaphysics of cognition. In this episode, we dive deep into the philosophical problems behind artificial general intelligence, not from the angle of safety or speed, but from the standpoint of what it means to think, to revise, and to reproduce. Peter’s blog and twitter account are legendary (@deontologistics) — more Peter here:The Laruelle Thread‘Artificial Bodies and the Promise of Abstraction’An excellent thread on Bayesian Solomonoff on his blog ‘The Reformatting of Homo sapiens’The Pet...2025-05-011h 04
DisintegratorAn Announcement :)Preorder Exocapitalism, support the pod!via Becoming Pressvia Metalabel2025-04-2302 min
DisintegratorLONGUE DURÉE Pt. 2 (w/ Timothy Morton)CW: There is some brief discussion of abusive familial relationships at several points within this episode.Two titanic figures in contemporary theory join us for two separate and strongly divergent episodes on the status of revolutionary thought in political philosophy today.Timothy Morton is one of the most outspoken and controversial voices in the discourse, someone whose impact punched hard into the artworld, defining a decade of new ecological and object-oriented aesthetics. For almost the entire 2010s and much of the 2020s it was hard to read a single exhibition text without recognizing Morton’s...2025-04-071h 15DisintegratorLONGUE DURÉE Pt. 1 (w/ Ray Brassier)Two titanic figures in contemporary theory join us for two separate and strongly divergent episodes on the status of revolutionary thought in political philosophy today. Ray Brassier influenced a generation of philosophers not only with his outstanding and highly rigorous writing, but also his absolutely stunning translations of Quentin Meillassoux and François Laruelle, and in so doing is subcutaneously responsible for literally a decade of earthquakes in the discourse. Ray joins us to evaluate the status of Marx in the 21st century.Ray traces the long arc from Nihil Unbound through Marx, Sellars, and the in...2025-04-071h 08
Disintegrator28. Imperative Pythagoreanism (w/ Giuseppe Longo)It’s such an honor to welcome Giuseppe Longo to the pod! Professor Giuseppe Longo is the Research Director Emeritus at Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. His work spans mathematics, computer science, biology, especially through the connective theoretical tissue of epistemology. Our conversation orbits around the limitations (or specific capacities) of computation, especially as computation becomes more and more central to mainstream theories of thought, being, life, and even physics. Longo pushes back on computationalism, grounding his critique in the sciences and in mathematics, especially as it becom...2025-03-1859 min
Disintegrator27. Critique as Commodity (w/ Morgane Billuart)We’re on with Morgane Billuart, a writer and artist and a researcher whose work engages critically with technologically mediated and determined worlds — not least within her exceptional book “Cycles, the Sacred and the Doomed: Inquiries in Female Health Technologies.” Morgane joins us to talk about a large, recent research project on a particular character that many of us identifies with, what Geert Lovink calls the “critical internet researcher” — a figure who engages in a kind of postdisciplinary media theory while at the same time producing and publishing their work through the very media they are studying, the Online. We strongly...2025-03-0458 min
Disintegrator26. The Great Outdoors (w/ Gordon White)Gordon White is a chaos magician, shamanic practitioner, and permaculture designer based in Tasmania. He podcasts and teaches through the vehicle of Rune Soup, the world's largest magic academy, and he writes prolifically -- not only on the Rune Soup blog but in several incredible books. Gordon's breadth and depth of knowledge is unbelievably humbling, and it was an honor to spend an hour or so with him.We came to Gordon for perspective, to some bring context and breadth and dimension to our relatively narrow world. Disintegrator sits in a kind of para-academic space, where we tend...2025-02-191h 01
café snakecomplainte de la playlist dropshippéeOn explore le monde des plateformes de streaming musical, leurs rôles et leurs impacts sur le monde de la musique. On discute aussi du nouvel essor du nationalisme consumériste et le piège du dropshipping.Kanye crashout, Jack Schlossberg, Onijah au Pakistan +++Patreon: patreon.com/cafesnakeMusique:Nettspend - Growing UpRaccoon - Passenger PrinceRaccoon- PerrasLa SQ débarque sur TikTokLa Presse, Daphné B.https://www.lapresse.ca/societe/chroniques/2025-02-0...2025-02-1159 min
Disintegrator25. CRIT (w/ Avocado Ibuprofen)You already follow @avocado_ibuprofen. His memes IV-ed into the arm of the artworld, circulating through the DMs; they are acidic and thereaputic, they throw up solidarity through critique and gentle negation. We talk about art education, disappointment, exhaustion, glamour, and a beautiful idea (automating the viewer) he began to expand upon in an interview with Valentinas Klimašauskas here.Buy his mugs. Memes we discuss:(Selling Mugs Galaxy Brain)(Phone/Pocket/Lineage)(AI Meme 1, AI Meme 2)Ambient track is 'Respect for the Medium' by friend of the pod They Became What They Beheld, sho...2025-02-0446 min
Disintegrator24. A Girl is a Gun (w/ Alex Quicho)Few people have done more to define the contemporary media theory landscape than Alex Quicho @amfq, an indefinable thinker and artist and intellectual force who brought Girl Theory to the front and center of The Discourse. One note, friend of the pod Morgane Billuart has also just released an interview with Alex on her excellent podcast Becoming the Product. We don't believe there's such a thing as too much AMFQ. Morgane is an upcoming guest for us too, so it's a nice trifecta!In terms of Quicho-core:Everyone is a Girl Online (September 2023) -- if y...2025-01-231h 08
Disintegrator[Superlecture]: Nobody Listens to Music Anymore (Marek)On finishing the project of music, on TikTokCore and SpotifyCore, on music as cosplay and the technicity of cultural imperialism, on the bureaucratic turn in the arts, on being dangerous. Lecture given for my beloved DMR at Columbia University at the beginning of December. Feeling a bit bolder than usual on this one, but it's cuz my toddler is sleeping good. 2024-12-3053 min
Disintegrator23. The Club (w/ Li Zhenhua)No notes, pure vivid realness and realism.Li Zhenhua is a major force in the art world, especially in film.A tone poem from Torino. Marek's favorite episode.2024-12-1151 min
Disintegrator22. Janky (w/ Daniel Felstead and Jenn Leung)Two of our discourse besties from UAL's Fashion Media Practice & Criticism -- experiential designers Daniel Felstead and Jenn Leung -- join us to talk Janky Capitalism (the obvious falling-apart weirdness of the world while capital spins off farther and farther away from it, leaving us behind), Roblox, and neural media. You probably know their work from the iconic 'The Metaverse in Janky Capitalism' on Dis and its associated 'Literally No Place' and 'Always on My Mind' -- or from associated speaking / discourse production all over the internet (++ more on Jenn (link) and Daniel (link)).References from t...2024-11-2554 min
Disintegrator21. LIFE (w/ Blaise Agüera y Arcas)Blaise Agüera y Arcas is one of most important people in AI, and apart from his leadership position as CTO of Technology & Society at Google, he has one of those resumes or affiliations lists that seems to span a lot of very fundamental things. He’s amazing; the thoughtfulness and generosity with which he communicates on this episode gently embraced our brains while lazering them to mush. We hope you have the same experience. References include:Blaise’s own books Who Are We Now?, Ubi Sunt, and the upcoming What Is Intelligence?He references James C. Scott’s...2024-11-141h 02
Novara MediaNovara FM: What’s Next for AI Now It’s Ingested the Entire Internet? w/ Marek PoliksThe rise of artificial intelligence will bring about a planetary-scale shift in human life and politics – and, it seems, a lot of weird social media spam. But for all the grand pronouncements from techno-utopians and pessimists alike, the reality is that there’s still much to be decided about the future that AI portends. At the […]2024-11-071h 24
Novara MediaNovara FM: What's Next for AI Now It's Ingested the Entire Internet? w/ Marek PoliksThe rise of artificial intelligence will bring about an irreversible, planetary-scale shift in human life and politics. But for all the grand pronouncements from techno-utopians and pessimists alike, the reality is that there's still much to be decided about the future that AI portends.
At the forefront of those investigations is Marek Poliks, a composer, theorist and co-host of the Disintegrator podcast, where he and Roberto Alonso explore the frontiers of human-AI relations with guests from all disciplines.
He joins Richard Hames to talk about what's next for AI now that it's ingested the entire internet, how the concept of...2024-11-071h 24
Disintegrator20. Low-Power Mode (w/ Tega Brain)A very warm welcome to Helena McFadzean, who is joining the Disintegrator wrecking crew. This week’s episode features one of our favorite artists, Tega Brain. In this episode, we talk through two of our favorite pieces, both of which are not just great exercises in conceptual design, but are actual practical engineering projects whose artistry consists in real solutioning. References from the pod: Sam Lavigne is an artist and engineer and educator whose collaborates frequently with Tega Brain. Both his creative technical work and his writing are highly recommended.The two pieces we talk about most...2024-10-3151 min
Disintegrator19. Anamnesis & Prosthetic Imagination (w/ Jonathan Impett)Here’s a gem from our archive, a recording with Jonathan Impett — Director of Research at the Orpheus Instituut. Impett has had a MAJOR impact on Roberto and Marek, a kind of intellectual godfather to the two of us. His staggering breadth of knowledge continues to blow our minds. You can find more about Impett's work here. A number of references from the discussion include: Impett's chapter in Choreomata is awesome. Buy our book! :) Impett references Alexander Nagel and Chris Wood's Anachronic Renaissance an unbelievably ambitious tome that delves into the situatedness of art both inside a...2024-09-1637 min
Disintegrator18. What is a World? (w/ Patricia Reed)Majorly excited to have Patricia Reed on the pod. This is a beefy episode! If I was looking for a major reset in my relationship to the world around me, I'd start here.Here’s a list of the references we make throughout the interview:Here's that e-flux diagram I talk about in the intro, and here's a lecture in which she discusses this diagram. Here's the Diagramming the Common piece, which is older but I really like it. Here's a must-read interview with Denise Ferreira da Silva where the concept of "the end of the world as...2024-09-051h 11
Disintegrator17. Computation is Computation (w/ M. Beatrice Fazi)This episode features one of our most anticipated guests: M. Beatrice Fazi.M. Beatrice Fazi is a philosopher working in philosophy of computation, philosophy of technology and media philosophy. In this episode we mostly cover some key definitions relating to computation and its onto-epistemology grounded in Fazi’s landmark book, Contingent Computation: Abstraction, Experience, and Indeterminacy in Computational Aesthetics published in 2018. But our discussion doesn't end in 2018.Now more than ever, Fazi`s work on computation holds unbelievable importance with wide-ranging implications. Philosophy is becoming a major foil to technocapital and technopolitics, forcing us to seriously (re...2024-08-2051 min
Disintegrator𝑑𝑒𝑠𝑢𝑏𝑗𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑒 ℎ𝑒𝑎𝑣𝑒𝑛 (𝑤/ 𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑒𝑙𝑖𝑐𝑖𝑠𝑚01)𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑒𝑙𝑖𝑐𝑖𝑠𝑚01 𝑗𝑜𝑖𝑛𝑠 𝑢𝑠 𝑡𝑜 𝑡𝑎𝑙𝑘 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑎𝑑𝑖𝑠𝑒2024-08-1054 minDisintegrator16. Sh*tshow Theory (w/ Mattin & Inigo Wilkins)BACK with some of the world's foremost experts on NOISE: Mattin & Inigo Wilkins.Relevant links include:The Noise Research Union (NRU) which involves both Mattin and Inigo alongside founding members Cécile Malaspina, Martina Raponi, Miguel Prado, and Sonia de Jager.Mattin's AWESOME book Social Dissonance (out on Urbanomic).Mattin's podcast Social Discipline.Inigo Wilkin's UPCOMING book, which is obviously going to be amazing, which will be released on Urbanomic: Irreversible Noise (here's a sneak peak from an interview with Nina Protocol).2024-07-3049 minDisintegrator15. Systems (w/ Georgina Voss)In this episode, Georgina Voss helps Roberto and Marek kick off on a journey to think about the relationship between human agency and political scale, specifically how that relationship is mediated by technology. The next few episodes will stick to this theme. Georgina's work spans the arts, anthropology, policy, technology, cultural theory -- and, critical to this episode's scope: systems theory. Her new book Systems Ultra is a GREAT read, beginning with a kind of xenoanthropology of one of the tech sector's most... extra... events: the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). Georgina's work further referenced here includes:Supra S...2024-07-0854 minDisintegrator[Hyperlecture] Marek & Roberto: Non-Player Dynamics: Agency Fetish in Game-WorldYoutube for the full experience + Q&A. In the pod, I say to just listen to the audio, but honestly the video is really really fire.Lecture given to our friends at Foreign Objekt, now ON POD.Programmer and Organizer: Sepideh Majidi Moderator: Maure Coise Video Edit: Shaum MehraTons of references here from all over the place, but definitely strongly in debt to the work of many many people. See the YT video for a more complete accounting, but a first pass definitely should call...2024-06-111h 43Disintegrator14. Deathcare for the End of the World (w/ Patricia MacCormack)This one is deep so see tons of explanatory resources below. The philosophy talk turns to political talk (easier to grok) after about 15 minutes, but the philosophical context adds a lot of richness to the latter conversation. Patricia MacCormack is driving productive tension between philosophy and political action. Her Ahuman Manifesto is strongly recommended, even to those who may take issue with it in principle (anti-natalism! anti-idpol! anti-human!), because it makes a forceful argument for a politics based in empathy and care as applied to everyone and every thing. Core co...2024-05-2854 minDisintegrator13. Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Creative Production (Marek Solo Ep.)Creativity = sus.2024-05-1325 minDisintegrator12. Piles (w/ Alex Reisner)Alex Reisner's writing in the Atlantic is some of the best investigative coverage of Large Language Models out there. In this episode, we talk through the mind-bogglingly vast archives of random pirated material that provide every major commercial LLMs with their linguistic faculty. Definitely check out his writing on https://www.theatlantic.com/author/alex-reisner/, especially the phenomenal January 11 piece on "memorization."ALSO -- if you haven't -- submit to our call for papers on AI interfaces: link! We'd love to have you.2024-04-3040 minDisintegrator11. Reinventing the Surface (w/ Refik Anadol)Refik Anadol, and by extension Refik Anadol Studio, is one of the most visible, if not the most visible, artists working with large models today. His work is everywhere, from MoMa to the Biennale Venezia, from the very first Las Vegas Exosphere art display to the front of Walt Disney Concert Hall. We’re delighted to have had him on the pod to talk through his artistic philosophy, touching specifically on media, light, AI, and his new incredibly large-scope Nature Model project announced back in January (approximately the same time we had our conversation with him — yes, the backl...2024-04-1036 minDisintegrator10. Voice (w/ Jennifer Walshe)Jennifer Walshe is one of the coolest people we know. Her artistic work and thought has broken our brains for years, leaving us shipwrecked in its torrential waves of reference and irony and joy and conceptual viscera.We talk about her recent piece for the Unsound Dispatch, 13 Ways of Looking at AI, Art & Music — a series of vignettes that in their totality assemble into one of the most coherent accountings of what it is we’re all experiencing.Some references from the ep:Listen to Things Know Things on RTÉ Lyric FM. Hopefully you’re aware...2024-03-2649 minDisintegrator[Bonus] Non-Player Dynamics (Teaser)Go here for more information about the upcoming talk that Roberto and Marek are doing Sunday, March 10, at 10AM Pacific. It's virtual, so come join us!!!2024-03-0606 minDisintegrator9. Alignment (w/ Benjamin Bratton)Benjamin Bratton writes about world-spanning intelligences, grinding geopolitical tectonics, “accidental megastructures” of geotechnical cruft, the millienia-long terraforming project through which humans rendered an earth into a world, and the question of what global-scale order means in the twilight of the Westphalian nation-state.Candidly, if either of us were to recommend a book to help you understand the present state of ‘politics’ or ‘technology’, we’d probably start with Bratton’s The Stack — written 10 years ago, but still very much descriptive of our world and illuminative of its futures.If the first 10 minutes are too “tech indu...2024-02-2753 minDisintegrator8. World Models (w/ Anil Bawa-Cavia)Anil Bawa-Cavia (AA Cavia) is one of our favorite writers and practitioners on the philosophy of computation. We discovered his work through Logiciel, on &&& (we 2024-02-1458 minDisintegrator7. Protocols of Encounter (w/ Sofian Audry)Sofian Audry wrote Art in the Age of Machine Learning, an absolute canon read that contextualizes the contemporary flurry of creative AI application and detournement within a much longer lineage of human-machine relations. Their chapter in Choreomata straddles theory and practice, situating Sofian’s own work in the field of robotics within a history of questions: how do we communicate to an audience through and with machine performers? How does the external intelligibility of a system complicate its autonomy? How, and why, do we construct empathy with our machine collaborators? In this conversation we discuss Sofian’s co...2024-01-1743 minDisintegrator6. Autolinguistics & Autopoetics (w/ Sasha Stiles)Sasha Stiles writes poetry with and as machines. We first encountered her work as a direct, powerful rejoinder to the allegation that AI-generated work is cold, unfeeling, or lifeless. Her chapter in Choreomata underlines the technicity implicit in language and in poetics, positioning technology not as a thing one applies to language but instead as a mode of knowing inextricable from and in kinship with language. A few references from the text:First, Stile’s beautiful work TECHNELEGY, which boasts an endorsement from Ray Kurzweil on its front cover. The audio version of the poem “Comp...2024-01-0244 minDisintegrator[Bonus] Choreomata Launch Panel (w/ Foreign Objekt)Here's the audio version of the Choreomata book launch with Foreign Objekt, featuring Anil Bawa-Cavia, Jonathan Impett, Mattin, Reza Negarestani, Keith Tilford, and Jennifer Walshe.MANY thanks to Sepideh Majidi.The full video is here. You can find Choreomata anywhere, especially here.2023-12-261h 22Disintegrator5. The Unknown X (w/ Luciana Parisi)Luciana Parisi has produced some of the 21st century’s most daring and bold work in the theories of cybernetics, information, and computation. Her work has had a major impact on both Marek and Roberto’s artistic practices, specifically her early work in the inorganic components of human reproduction. Just a brief content note — we mention some complex topics including consent and suicide at the top of the pod, specifically in the context of David Marriott’s concept of “Revolutionary Suicide”. These concepts are not extensively discussed throughout, but are nonetheless heavy topics. We strongly recommend three texts in par...2023-12-1850 minDisintegrator4. Capital Sticks to Itself (Marek Solo Ep.)First - come to our book launch, hosted by our friends at Foreign Objekt and organized by Sepideh Majidi. Dec 9 at 9AM Pacific: https://www.foreignobjekt.com/post/choreomata-book-launch-panel-ai-as-mass-performance. Since both Roberto and Marek are traveling this week, we’re doing something a little different this time — Marek put together a solo-cast. Marek and Roberto wrote the opening chapter of Choreomata, a thought-experiment about what happens to subjective experience when it is fully subcontracted out by the various routines of datafication and computation that comprise contemporary digital society. Academics and researchers constantly worry about the...2023-12-0327 minDisintegrator3. Deep Learning as Parasite (w/ Jon McCormack)Jon McCormack has been investigating the relationships between machine intelligences and creativity for decades. In Episode 3, Jon joins Marek and Roberto to speak about the social and cultural implications of AI -- beginning with the parasitism that deep learning methodologies practice upon human culture and the downstream effects on how we think, learn, and act. We had the privilege of meeting Jon at an event thrown by SensiLab, an incredible research facility founded by Jon within Monash University, at their Creative AI summit in Prato this past summer. For anyone interested in the creative dimensions of AI, we...2023-11-2243 minDisintegrator2. Free Labor, Hidden Labor (w/ Tiziana Terranova)Tiziana Terranova has provided all of us with one of the sharpest critical accounts of the modern internet. In this episode, Tiziana, Roberto, and Marek discuss the labor dynamics at play in the contemporary digital economy -- from changes in the social status of creative work, the hidden labor underpinning the mechanics of the virtual world, and the material means by which AI resists pushes for decentralization.We reference a few of Tiziana’s texts in the interview, which build foundational scaffolding for theories of what it means to live within networks: Free Labor: Producing Culture of th...2023-11-2246 minDisintegrator1. Human is Not a Thing (w/ Reza Negarestani)Reza Negarestani has put together one of the strongest philosophical conceptions of Artificial General Intelligence. In this episode, Reza, Marek, and Roberto hit virtually every limit of AI theory -- from the outer banks of the "human", the boundaries of creativity and imagination, the borderlands of contemporary computation, and the social and political and aesthetic implications of all of the above. This episode is a great companion piece to not just Reza's chapter in Choreomata (Galatea Reloaded: Imagination Inside-Out Imagine) but his absolutely mindblowing work Intelligence and Spirit. We reference a few texts in the interview:2023-11-1358 min