‘Digital Machines’ is the new exhibition of the European Digital Deal, an investigation led by Ars Electronica and co-funded by Creative Europe.

Considering the machine as the revolutionary material of modern times, the exhibition presents works by 14 artists - including the winners of the S+T+ARTS 2024 Prize - proposing visual narratives about the digital devices that shape industry, society, and technology; and the alternative digital devices that imagine new relationships between these pillars. 

Through the interconnection of democracy, industry, and the digital world, the thirteen works on display question the current architecture of innovation processes and make a case for considering the long-term environmental and societal impacts in designing fair, ethical, and sustainable digital machines in the future. The algorithms of social networks, the resources that support Artificial Intelligence devices, the ‘codes of conscience’ of heavy vehicles, artificial vision systems that take care of public space, speculative mapping machines, and artifacts of disinformation are some of the themes explored in this exhibition, curated by art project manager Pablo de Soto.

‘Digital Machines’ will be hosted by LABoral - Center for Art and Industrial Creation (Gijón, Spain) until 27 September. Learn more at labouralcentrodearte.org.

Works on display:
• Whispers (2024), by Calin Segal
• Calculating Empires: A Genealogy of Technology and Power Since 1500 (2023), by Vladan Joler and Kate Crawford
• Anatomy of an AI system (2018), by Vladan Joler and Kate Crawford
• New Extractivism (2021), by Vladan Joler
• Anatomy of the non-facts: AI Hyperrealism (2024), by Martyna Marciniak
• Emotional Counter (2024), by Noemí Iglesias
• Mapping an uncertain landscape (2024), by Sonya Isupova
• Algorithm Monologue: How Facebook turns user data into profit (2019), by Vladan Joler and Katarzyna Szymielewicz
• Infrastructure of a migratory bird (2020), by Vladan Joler, Felix Stalder and Gordan Savičić
• Conscience Code (2019), by AKQA
• A Perfect Place. Diptych / Utopia (2024), by Elisa Cuesta
• Xixónica Temporary Capsule (2024), by Juan Cañada and Juan Gama
• Filandón: Public Infraesctructura for trans media gatherings (2024)

__
This exhibition is part of European Digital Deal, an investigation (2023-2025) lead by Ars Electronica and co-funded by Creative Europe, into how the accelerated, yet at times unconsidered adoption of new technologies – such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, blockchain and algorithmic processing – can alter or undermine democratic processes.