Tactics&Practice [podcast]

What does it mean to have more AI generated images online than images created by humans? Should we resist constant uptime, visibility, and acceleration? And do we need to rethink reality in the age of AI when ‘default fakeness’, ‘flippening’ and ‘image amnesia’?In the final episode, I’m joined by designer, artist and cyberethnographer Ruby Justice Thelot alongside artist Nina Davies to explore how AI image generation is reshaping the political role of images. Together we discuss the diminishing “sticking power” of images, the legal limits of photography as evidence, the long history of image manipulation, desire-driven virality, and the tactics that make real events appear AI-generated. Ruby introduces the concept of “necromimetics,” arguing that generative “slop” can neutralise an image’s capacity to enact symbolic death. We close with a conversation on marketing, trend forecasting, Meta glasses, and why “life admin” parties might be the future. RELATED LINKS  Future Artefacts podcastNina Davies Image SyncersThe Western Front, CanadaRuby’s essay for Ocular called The Death of The Image Has MAde Us Wake Up To Reality The Treachery of Images essayHow I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Slop essayEverything is Default Fake essayTaste 101 SubstackThe Commissar Vanishes by David KingPostmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism by Fredric JamesonMythologies by Roland BarthesDiscipline and Punish by Michel Foucault Necropolitics by Achille MbembeGramophone, Film, Typewriter by Friedrich KittlerA Theory of Vibe by Peli GrietzerRijksakademie Fake exhibitionJohn Heartfield artistAnthropic’s 81,000-person studyThe Capture tv series on BBCCanon 35 courtroom photography rule COLOPHON Host: Rebecca EdwardsGuest: Ruby Justice Thelot & Nina DaviesRecording: Rebecca EdwardsMusic: Gašper TorkarEditing: Rebecca Edwards, Janez Fakin JanšaAudio post-production: Oskar Kandare, Staš KramarBecoming Image podcast seriesCurated by: Rebecca EdwardsCoordinated by: Janez Fakin JanšaProduced by: Marcela OkretičProduction:Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art Ljubljana, 2026Part of:tactics&practice#17: Becoming ImageCurated by Marco De MutiisSupported by:the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Ljubljana The post S6 [Becoming Image] E5: The image that’s tired [w/Ruby Justice Thelot] appeared first on Aksioma.

What infrastructures shape what we’re allowed to do, see, or become? From Technical to Hot to Operational, what are the political ontologies of the contemporary image and how might we rethink interfacing with interfaces? In this episode, artist Ben Grosser traces his background and early interest in computer music and scientific imaging, as well as early experiments in destabilising software assumptions. He explains his Demetricator works, browser extensions that hide visible social-media metrics to reveal how likes and counts condition users, and argues that platforms are designed for growth and compulsion. We talk through his “Praise-Prompt Envelope” theory, the dynamics of chatbot validation to shifting forms of literacy in the age of AI-generated text and dark patterns, and how platform interfaces engineer desire, culture and behaviour through the logic of engagement. RELATED LINKS Ben’s 2009 self-portrait from the Flexible Pixels project  Demetricator works: Twitter Demetricator, Facebook Demetricator, Instagram Demetricator Reading the Praise/Prompt Machine: An Interface Criticism Approach to ChatGPT by Ben Grosser and Søren Bro Pold    Douglas Rushkoff’s book Present Shock  Matthew Fuller and Eyal Weizman’s book Investigative Aesthetics Lux Affirma prototype here Safebook The Endless Doomscroller Laurence Sterne’s novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman  B. F. Skinner’s idea of operant conditioning, was first introduced in a 1937 journal article, and fully formalised it in his landmark 1938 book, The Behavior of Organisms: An Experimental Analysis  Stuck in the Scroll  Not For You  Francois Bonnet’s book, After Death   COLOPHON Host: Rebecca EdwardsGuest: Ben GrosserRecording: Rebecca EdwardsMusic: Gašper TorkarEditing: Rebecca Edwards, Janez Fakin JanšaAudio post-production: Oskar Kandare, Staš KramarBecoming Image podcast seriesCurated by: Rebecca EdwardsCoordinated by: Janez Fakin JanšaProduced by: Marcela OkretičProduction:Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art Ljubljana, 2026Part of:tactics&practice#17: Becoming ImageCurated by Marco De MutiisSupported by:the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Ljubljana The post S6 [Becoming Image] E4: Darker Patterns [w/Ben Grosser] appeared first on Aksioma.

What does it mean to imagine alternatives to prescripted narratives when AI has already prescribed the rules of the world? How to navigate prescriptive AI systems to prototype other worlds, other rules, and other ways of playing within algorithmic constraint?In this episode, curator and writer Milia Xin Bi discusses how board games and tabletop RPGs shape her practice exploring media art, emerging technologies, and games, contrasting their improvisational “in-between” play with the predesigned possibilities of video games. We talk about her recent exhibition at FACT “Can Meeple Escape Neophoria?”, as well as AI and hybrid agency, glitches and gaps as sites of play, the gallery as a space to preserve friction against technology’s drive to collapse distance, and what modding and speedrunning can tell us about alternative tech futures. Cat-fu gets an honourable mention too. RELATED LINKS https://miliaxinbi.xyz/https://www.instagram.com/miliabbb/ Can Meeple Escape The Neurophoria exhibition at FACT Carcassonne game Jan Zuiderveld’s coffee machine as part of Can Meeple Escape The Neurophoria exhibition at FACT Donald Winnicott’s concept of potential space originates from his book Playing and Reality Joseph Wilk’s Crip Ship as part of Can Meeple Escape The Neurophoria exhibition at FACT Gilles Deleuze introduced the term dividual in his 1990 essay Postscript on the Societies of ControlKaren Hao’s talk at Manchester Business School Sam Lavigne’s SlowLLM browser  McKenzie Wark Gamer Theory K Allado-McDowell’s concept of Neural Media Katherine N. Hayles’ idea of an integrated cognitive framework originates in her book Bacteria to AI: Human Futures with Our Nonhuman SymbiontsCat-fu video examples: here, and here QQ by Tencent Y7 Undead Internet Theory talk and screening at ESEA Ivan Seal’s exhibition Your Guests Never Mention Me at Alma Pearl as part of The Black Lights Festival in BlackpoolTeleAI (The Institute of Artificial Intelligence of China Telecom) COLOPHON Host: Rebecca EdwardsGuest: Milia Xin BiRecording: Rebecca EdwardsMusic: Gašper TorkarEditing: Rebecca Edwards, Janez Fakin JanšaAudio post-production: Oskar Kandare, Staš KramarBecoming Image podcast seriesCurated by: Rebecca EdwardsCoordinated by: Janez Fakin JanšaProduced by: Marcela OkretičProduction:Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art Ljubljana, 2026Part of:tactics&practice#17: Becoming ImageCurated by Marco De MutiisSupported by:the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Ljubljana The post S6 [Becoming Image] E3: Ready Player None [w/Milia Xin Bi] appeared first on Aksioma.

What does thinking or imaging look like when it’s optimised for scroll, repetition, and affect? When thinking itself becomes “scrollified” how do repetition, optimisation, and affect rewire imagination, compress attention, and turn imaging itself into something endlessly refreshed, looped, and platform-shaped?In this episode, London-based British-Nigerian interdisciplinary artist and filmmaker Dian Joy discusses their research-driven practice exploring subjectivity in the age of networked media and how images circulate and shape identity, desire, and perception. Drawing on film theory and Alexander Galloway’s ideas about the cinematic encounter, we ask what changes when images shift from singular cinematic events to an ambient algorithmic barrage. We discuss the research underpinning Dian’s new film work, Krumville, including a LoRA (Low-Rank Adaptation algorithm) trained on screenshots from her social media feeds, and years of diarised, affective experiences that are reconfigured into a fictional town structured by hyperlink logic and the condensed language of short-form media. The conversation explores AI as a tool for rendering implicit cultural patterns and biases visible at scale, while interrogating authorship, virality and the changing conditions of media literacy in an age of dual-screen attention. RELATED LINKS https://dianjoy.mehttps://www.instagram.com/dian__joyThe Hoping MechanismKrumville premiering at AND Festival 2026 Alexander Galloway: Interface Effect Gilbert Simondon’s idea of the pre-individual is developed primarily in his major work Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information (L’individu et sa genèse physico-biologique / L’individuation psychique et collective) José Esteban Muñoz defined unconscious futurity in his book Cruising Utopia as a collective, not-yet-conscious realm of potentiality.  Günther Anders’s Promethean Shame is written about in an article titled Günther Anders’s “Promethean Shame”: Technological Ressentiment and SurveillanceCarly Busta’s essay Hallucinating sense in the era of infinity-contentJenna Bliss’s work True Entertainment in the group exhibition Genuine Fake Premium Economy at the ICA COLOPHON Host: Rebecca EdwardsGuest: Dian JoyRecording: Rebecca EdwardsMusic: Gašper TorkarEditing: Rebecca Edwards, Janez Fakin JanšaAudio post-production: Oskar Kandare, Staš KramarBecoming Image podcast seriesCurated by: Rebecca EdwardsCoordinated by: Janez Fakin JanšaProduced by: Marcela OkretičProduction:Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art Ljubljana, 2026Part of:tactics&practice#17: Becoming ImageCurated by Marco De MutiisSupported by:the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Ljubljana The post S6 [Becoming Image] E2: Brainrot as Theory [w/Dian Joy] appeared first on Aksioma.

Who are we when our identities are shaped through interfaces, datasets, and platforms? And what does it mean to see, to be seen, or to become visible when every act of seeing is mediated by software?  dmstfctn (Francesco Tacchini and Oliver Smith) join the podcast to discuss their decade-long collaboration exploring simulation, fiction and the hidden systems that shape contemporary digital life. Focusing on their “God Mode” trilogy and the latest artwork Big Things Coming (2026) at Chemist, London from July this year, the conversation traces a world of AI reward hacking, synthetic training data and algorithmic misbehaviour through simulated supermarkets, theatrical game engines and self-playing videogames.From image-caption datasets and the Waluigi effect to data labour, optimisation metrics and the limits of language, the episode examines how machine learning systems not only represent the world but actively reshape it. Along the way, we discuss embodiment and consciousness through the work of N. Katherine Hayles, systemic realism, the aesthetics of lossy digital environments, and why leaving language behind for something like dance might offer a way out of computational logic. RELATED LINKS https://dmstfctn.nethttps://www.instagram.com/dmstfctnGOD MODE: Episode 3: Big things coming Waluigi’s PurgatorySad Luigi game Ennuigi 1.0 by Josh Millard. Thanks to Petra Szemán for the link up!N.B in the episode I say the game is based on a sad Waluigi, but it’s actually based on a sad Luigi.COCO dataset  Grim Fandango game The paper Depressive Realism: Four Theoretical Perspectives was published in 1988 by Lauren Alloy and Lyn Abramson in the book Cognitive Processes in Depression published by Guilford Press on May 27, 1988. Quake III Arena bot COLOPHON Host: Rebecca EdwardsGuest: dmstfctnRecording: Rebecca EdwardsMusic: Gašper TorkarEditing: Rebecca Edwards, Janez Fakin JanšaAudio post-production: Oskar Kandare, Staš KramarBecoming Image podcast seriesCurated by: Rebecca EdwardsCoordinated by: Janez Fakin JanšaProduced by: Marcela OkretičProduction:Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art Ljubljana, 2026Part of:tactics&practice#17: Becoming ImageCurated by Marco De MutiisSupported by:the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Ljubljana The post S6 [Becoming Image] E1: Who’s Still Here? [w/dmstfctn] appeared first on Aksioma.

What if the universe is silent not because it’s empty, but because intelligence knows when to hide? Writer and theorist Bogna Konior traces a forgotten genealogy linking early internet pioneers, ufology, and AI research to argue that the web functions as a site of first contact with inhuman cognition. Drawing on Liu Cixin’s Dark Forest Theory, she reframes communication as predation: every signal might risk exposure, every utterance (no matter how critical) might feed and stabilize future intelligence. Confronting the determinism and violence embedded in life on- and offline, Konior offers not escape, but the strange solace found in facing the world as it is. RELATED LINKS Bogna Koniorhttps://www.bognamk.comThe Dark Forest Theory of the Internet (Politi, 2025)https://www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?book_slug=the-dark-forest-theory-of-the-internet–9781509569250[The LLM Brainrot article mentioned in this episode]LLMs Can Get ‘Brain Rot’! COLOPHON Host: Neja BergerGuest: Bogna Konior Recording: Neja BergerMusic and audio mix: Gašper TorkarEditing: Neja Berger, Janez Fakin Janša Are You a Software Update? podcast series Curated by: Neja BergerCoordinated by: Janez Fakin JanšaProduced by: Marcela OkretičProduction:Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art Ljubljana, 2025 Part of:tactics&practice#16: Are You a Software Update?Curated by Nora O’ Murchú, Socrates Stamatatos, Janez Fakin Janša, Neja Berger Supported by:the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Nova Gorica The post S5 [Are You A Software Update?] E5: Silence in the Dark Forest [w/Bogna Konior] appeared first on Aksioma.

In a time of live-streamed genocide, it has truly never been more clear that witnessing suffering will not automatically trigger social transformation. If the answer is not in shocking jolts and major ruptures, what power might lie in the minor key? Professor and author Carolyn Pedwell weaves pragmatist philosophy, affect theory and contemporary social movements to reveal how “affective inhabitation”, subtle tendencies and collective habits accrue power, shaping new infrastructures of care, possibility, and resistance. RELATED LINKS Carolyn Pedwell, Revolutionary Routines: The Habits of Social Transformation (McGill-Queens University Press, 2021)https://www.mqup.ca/revolutionary-routines-products-9780228006220.php Carolyn Pedwell and Gregory J. Seigworth (eds.), Affect Theory Reader 2 (Duke University Press, 2023)https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-affect-theory-reader-2 E.K. Sedgewick, Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading, or, You’re So Paranoid, You Probably Think this Essay Is About Youhttps://www.ias.edu/sites/default/files/sss/pdfs/Critique/sedgwick-paranoid-reading.pdf Erin Manning, The Minor Gesture (Duke University Press, 2016)https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-minor-gesture Lauren Berlant Cruel Optimism (Duke University Press, 2013)https://www.dukeupress.edu/cruel-optimism COLOPHON Host: Neja BergerGuest: Carolyn Pedwell Recording: Neja BergerMusic and audio mix: Gašper TorkarEditing: Neja Berger, Janez Fakin Janša Are You a Software Update? podcast series Curated by: Neja BergerCoordinated by: Janez Fakin JanšaProduced by: Marcela OkretičProduction:Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art Ljubljana, 2025 Part of:tactics&practice#16: Are You a Software Update?Curated by Nora O’ Murchú, Socrates Stamatatos, Janez Fakin Janša, Neja Berger Supported by:the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Nova Gorica The post S5 [Are You A Software Update?] E4: Revolution in the Minor Key [w/Carolyn Pedwell] appeared first on Aksioma.

What if seduction—not dissection—could fracture algorithmic control? Artist, researcher and author Shaka McGlotten guides us through witchy warfare against quantification, deploying computational hexes, opacity, fugitivity and improvisational sabotage. Having given up on dialectics and excavation, we embrace surface-level dissociation, shifting from exit to error, from critique to conjure. We may not be able to escape the machine, but could yet seduce it off-script. RELATED LINKS Shaka McGlotten, Black Datahttps://www.academia.edu/16303256/Black_Data Shaka McGlotten, Virtual Intimacies: Media, Affect, and Queer Sociality (Suny Press, 2013):https://sunypress.edu/Books/V/Virtual-Intimacies Shaka McGlotten, Dragging, Or, In the Drag of a Queer Life (Routledge, 2022):https://www.routledge.com/Dragging-Or-in-the-Drag-of-a-Queer-Life/McGlotten/p/book/9780367439521 COLOPHON Host: Neja BergerGuest: Shaka McGlotten Recording: Neja BergerMusic and audio mix: Gašper TorkarEditing: Neja Berger, Janez Fakin Janša Are You a Software Update? podcast series Curated by: Neja BergerCoordinated by: Janez Fakin JanšaProduced by: Marcela OkretičProduction:Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art Ljubljana, 2025 Part of:tactics&practice#16: Are You a Software Update?Curated by Nora O’ Murchú, Socrates Stamatatos, Janez Fakin Janša, Neja Berger Supported by:the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Nova Gorica The post S5 [Are You A Software Update?] E3: Hexing the Algorithm [w/Shaka McGlotten] appeared first on Aksioma.

Forget Boy-Philosophy: here, we know that surfaces are sites of power and lambs are fluent in the noise of the world. But where is the difference between poetry and theory? In this episode, theorist and artist Alex Quicho dissects her concept of the Girl – a tripartite technology of subjectivity weaving the symbolic, the consumer and the inhuman – to offer a roadmap for navigating *planetary computation* (take a shot) through strategic inhabitation. If the predator overlooks the noise, what might we build in its blind spots? RELATED LINKS Alex Quichohttps://amfq.xyz Alex Quicho, girlstackhttps://girlstack.substack.com/ Girl Intelligence (Aksioma, 2025)https://aksioma.org/girl-intelligence Noura Tafeche, Alex Quicho, She’s Evil, Most Definitively Subliminalhttps://aksioma.org/ayasu/conference/shes-evil-most-definitively-subliminal Alex Quicho, Everyone Is A Girl Onlinehttps://www.wired.com/story/girls-online-culture/ Alex Quicho, The Gore Layer:https://spikeartmagazine.com/articles/discourse-the-gore-layer-alex-quicho Alex Quicho, Small Gods (Zero Books, 2021):https://www.collectiveinkbooks.com/zer0-books/our-books/small-gods Alex Quicho, GIRLSTACK, BODYSTACK Summithttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgZvs56WxXU Alex Quicho, Prey Mode, BODYSTACKED Summit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4hwM4ljoh4 COLOPHON Host: Neja BergerGuest: Alex Quicho Recording: Neja BergerMusic and audio mix: Gašper TorkarEditing: Neja Berger, Janez Fakin Janša Are You a Software Update? podcast series Curated by: Neja BergerCoordinated by: Janez Fakin JanšaProduced by: Marcela OkretičProduction:Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art Ljubljana, 2025 Part of:tactics&practice#16: Are You a Software Update?Curated by Nora O’ Murchú, Socrates Stamatatos, Janez Fakin Janša, Neja Berger Supported by:the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Nova Gorica The post S5 [Are You A Software Update?] E2: The Girl’s Inhuman Arsenal [w/Alex Quicho] appeared first on Aksioma.

Is there a way to define memes without implicitly memifying everything? We move through the definitional morass of memetics and meme studies towards researcher Sophie Publig’s critical posthumanist account of memes as sympoietic agents. From in-group jokes and troll hoaxes on early image-boards to Tiktok and the GameStop short squeeze, memes’ accelerated lifespans end up leading us to the esoteric mashups and angelcore aesthetics of NetSpi and the peer-review saga of translating “the girls who get it” for academia. RELATED LINKS Sophie Publighttps://publig-enemy.neocities.org Sophie Publig, Bestiarum Memeticumhttps://2024.xcoax.org/pdf/publig.pdf Sophie Publig, The Sympoietic Life of Internet Memes https://phaidra.bibliothek.uni-ak.ac.at/detail/o:72153?SID=29445&actPage=1&type=listview&sortfield=uw.general.title,SCORE&sortreverse=0 Critical Meme Reader III: Breaking the Meme (The Institute of Network Cultures, 2024)https://networkcultures.org/blog/publication/critical-meme-reader-iii-breaking-the-meme Neja Berger, (un)real data – real effectshttps://aksioma.org/podcast/unreal-data COLOPHON Host: Neja BergerGuest: Sophie Publig Recording: Neja BergerMusic and audio mix: Gašper TorkarEditing: Neja Berger, Janez Fakin Janša Are You a Software Update? podcast series Curated by: Neja BergerCoordinated by: Janez Fakin JanšaProduced by: Marcela OkretičProduction:Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art Ljubljana, 2025 Part of:tactics&practice#16: Are You a Software Update?Curated by Nora O’ Murchú, Socrates Stamatatos, Janez Fakin Janša, Neja Berger Supported by:the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Nova Gorica The post S5 [Are You A Software Update?] E1: Memes as Sympoietic Agents  [w/Sophie Publig] appeared first on Aksioma.