After the very problematic transmediale last year, that resulted in the quiet and early departure of director Nora O Murchu, I was quite worried how this edition will turn out. My worries increased when another anti-projewish message was posted on the tm web in November. Would the paying visitors be again taken innocent hostages to some ideological feud? The lagging ticket sales proved that I was not the only one thinking this way. The festival passes, that are usually sold out before the end of the calendar year remained available all the way up to the start of the festival; the day and single passes had a similar fate. Everyone was more cautious, waiting on the sidelines how things will turn out or simply lost interest.
Two recent transmediale regulars jumped in to fill the curatorial void – Ben Evans James and Elise Misao Hunchuck. This suggested continuity in terms of the “tm spirit”. More of the (good) same, so to speak.
The fact that tm was back at HKW in the traditional three simultaneous program tracks format, supported my hunch that continuity and stability would be the aim.
Nevertheless, I tuned down my expectations and decided to watch first two days from the sidelines remotely, checking in to the livestream from the main auditorium occasionally.
Day 1
Olga Goriunova, Mercedes Bunz: I am your ideal subject; I am your ideal collective
Digital twins and data clustering creating synthetic personnas (Goriunova), communities created through data sets (Bunz). The theme was good, but too broad in my opinion. The result was a rather generic introduction to a topic from two totally different angles. Or two different topics somehow adjacent to each other.
Nelly Y. Pinkrah: The distance between us. On violence, split technology, and Relation.
Black studies – postcollonialism – Glissant – Fanon. Must confess I tuned out after a while – this is the downside to not being on-site, one gets sidetracked so easily. I find Pinkrah is fresh and motivated, she has a clear direction. And she is one of the loyal few who showed up last year, which brought her the re-invite this year. Well done.
Day 2
Laura Kurgan: GPS for the Brain: Cognitive Mapping Revisited
Cognitive mapping – how does the brain store and use memory to navigate in space. Starting with literature review at the cross section of architecture and neuroscience. Models of the brain are influenced by our spatial understanding of our environment. The diagrams of the brain’s inner workings are used to construct artificial models of the brain used in generative AI. As a result, AI might be more similar to a compilation of our faulty assumptions about how our brain works then to the way a brain actually “works”. A metaphor for the brain is materialized in the form of a technology (AI), assumed to work in similar ways as our brain. Not such a surprise to me, but generally speaking good food for thought. This Columbia University prof new what she talked about and presented it well.
Concert ZULI and Hulubalang + Brandon Tay
My onsite experience started with this double concert wrapping up day 2. Both electronic music performances had an “ethnic” tint. The first by Zuli slightly (only very slightly) Middle Eastern and black/rap music , the second (full-on) South-East Asian. In both cases, overlaid by a thick later of digital distortion.
Zuli was more poppy and melodic, almost melodramatic when a distorted autotune voice howled I am still looking for a way out while a video showed some guy with white mud on his head crawling through something that looked like large underground sewage collectors.
Hulubalang with Brandon Tay on visuals was more energetic industrial techno-noise with weaved in Southeast Asia drum loops. Reminded me a bit of Low Jack L.I.E.S. debut Garifuna Variations. The performer was wiggling like a worm and screaming into the microfone in the darkness, but this manifested itself only slightly in the background of the soundtrack, the vocals stayed muted. Exorcising colonial ghosts. Visuals were loops and shape shift animations of archival black and white “ethnographic” photographs of Southeast Asian “subjects”. Quite traditional in VJ terms, but nonetheless fitting to the also rather crude loop-based soundtrack.
Both performances fit well into my perception of what topics are discussed on transmediale: technology, post-neo-whatever-colonialism and an emotional-affect dimension of digital interaction. The performances were edgy and conceptual enough to convey this through sound and image. I am happy to see transmediale and club transmediale (CTM) coming together; I think they belong together and the more they intertwine the better.
Day 3
Ranjoh Singh Dhaliwal: Generating an Artificial Democracy: On Sociological Intimacies of Bots and/as Personas
Persona (character) attributed to an AI is a result of human input at the AI model training stage. Speech patterns and expressions of labourers in third world countries used to train the model become evident (see ‘delve’ controversy). “Personalisation” is not “individualisation”, but approximation based on digital personas (clustering and averaging data). Intimate bots make the most money as if now (substitution of human interaction). The “dollar voting” will likely influence the future direction of AI development toward use cases that can be monetized.
Concluded by a conversation with Tiara Roxanne asking about haunting chatbot personnas?
Audience LLM ghost asks about personal branding. Influencers become virtual?
Audience marketing guru complains about skewed LLM data biased towards a US stereotypical knowledge perspective, pretending (unsuccessfully) to be German.
Yes, Dhaliwal is a prof, but I must say a bit boring one. He tried to be funny, but it did not work for me. In Lacanian terms, AI is in the mirror stage, starting to recognize itself. There is a long way to go but we will be ready with diapers. Hahahahaha.
Davies / Ratajczyk / Felstead (Screening)
Nina Davies – Stepping into the machine – technofaith; a mockumentary from a future where “cognitive automation” took peoples jobs and they dance for computers in the hope AI will “hear” their gestures. Good, but but the one I saw later (see below) was even better.
Aaron Ratajczyk – Screen recording of your private gesture – Scrolling through an empty CGI generated streets. Skype calls of people mirroring dance moves online. I got the idea, but… too long.
Daniel Felstead – Literally no place (link) – Bright colourful AI generated video mashup talking about the attitudes towards AI ranging from visionary to techno doom. Is the AI hype just a distraction from a continuing and intensifying capitalist extraction? Probably.
Silvio Lorusso, Chris Lee: Digital Maximalism vs. Existenzminimum
People living in cramped spaces dreaming about digital freedom. Remote work as a way to save money. Many random quotes flashing on the slides. Minimalism vs. minimism. What the webcam sees vs. what it does not. An Italian comedy-lecture. Laughing at one´s own home office work misery.
The closing conversation with Lee as not on site but only on screen, so I left to have a coffee instead.
Actually, prior to the lecture, I had quite high expectations. I checked the books of Lorusso (Entreprecariat) and Lee (Immutable) – both published by Ononmatopeee in Netherlands – and put them on my reading list. However, the lecture did not heighten my interest, it rather made me slightly disappointed. I still might read the books, but the effect of the lecture was opposite to that of Voss and O`Dwyer last year, where I was more enticed to read their books afterwards.
Hana Yoo: Acts of Proximity No. 02: Where Have All the Sheep Gone?
Reality shifting the narrative of North Korea sending balloons loaded with rubbish to South Korea: In fact, this action is an expression of love. The speakers blaring songs across the inter-korean border are in fact playing love songs. And the ballistic rockets launched into the sky are in fact the expressions of a crazy burning love. North loves the South as much as South loves the North. Just like in any love drama, it takes time before the parties understand the signals the other is transmitting and react appropriately. Accompanied by a resin sculpture of a sheep attached to a meteorological balloon.
The performance format of a reality shifting life stream was very appropriate to this imaginary narrative. I got it and it made all totally sense to me. If you knew the “real” situation, it was slightly funny because it was so absurd.
The performance also very much shifted my perception of the sheep sculpture, which, in itself, was not that appealing. With the story wrapped around it it looked much better.
Interesting juxtaposition with Ripoll-Hurier´s reality shifting video (below).
(near) near but — far: A Closing Conversation
I missed it because had a drink with a friend who I bumped into instead, but well …
Affirmations are not as Powerful as Belief (Screening)
Common topic of the videos: Employing mind and/or body to disconnect and reconnect the user from their everyday lived realities.
Nina Davies – Haters will say I’m real – when cameras track our every move and our actions turn into video edits, we reclaim agency by moving/dancing in a way simulating an edit and thus reclaiming agency over the edit. Sounds complicated but the video made total sense. Nina Davies is simply top game.
Simon Ripoll-Hurier – One Try Away (excerpt) – reality shifting (kind of autohypnosis) testimonials on the audio track and a rather lengthy static shot video. Interesting topic that coincided with Hana Yoo’s work in an good way. But the video could be better. Yawn.
Dani and Sheilah ReStack – Stovepipe to the Sun (excerpt) – a bit confusing, synopsis explained something about women emancipation, dreaming as a method of escaping patriarchal society. Camera work/editing was good.
Maud Craigie – Placing – a speculative marketing app remunerating users for product placement in their daily conversation. Straightforward, “classical” approach, short but to the point, a nice reflection on the gig economy and how those “little jobs” one does for money transform one´s behaviour. I felt a link to Lorusso´s lecture and book.
Charlotte Zhang – Tycoon (excerpt) a rather dark movie from different urban slums, an accusation of the capitalist violence and the spectacle obscuring it. I’d really like to see more. Great videography. Both abstract and concrete.
A good reel. Little bit let down by showing three excerpts, basically long trailers for the real thing. The positive view would be I got to see a sneasneak peak at something still in progress. Well…
EC’s conclusion
As every year, transmediale was worth it.
First of all a great applause for Hunchuck and James – they did their best and they worked very hard. I observed them sometimes standing around prior to an event’s start. They looked a serious and probably stressed, but in a good way. They did not look unhappy. I think they can be really proud of what they achieved. This year´s transmediale was a smooth and pleasant ride.
My expectation of “more of the same” has materialized. There was a continuity of themes discussed, a lot focusing on the emotional/affect/relationship dimension of technology and remote communication. I guess this is the O Murchu heritage. Loyal contributors who showed up last year were re-invited (“dinosaur” Parikka, Lorusso, Pinkrah, Davies, etc.) and one could see it as a lack of change or as a cost saving measure (friends work for less/free), but in fact I did not mind. The cost saving also manifested in the absence of a transmediale exhibition, but also here, I did not really mind. What I appreciated was that the core was there, the plentiful three-track program. And it was good.
Looking back, the Zuli / Hulubalang concert was a highlight. I am hoping for even more TM/CTM interconnections and maybe even a merge one day again. From the screenings, Nina Davies stood out, which was a continuation of how she stood out in 2023 and 2024, but Felstead was also good. Even though it was almost a bit overninadaviesied this year (all three compilation reels started with a ND video). In terms of lectures and performances, I attended less than I would have liked to. I found it good that a number of them addressed the back end of AI models from a media-critical background, but I can´t point to any single lecture that I could praise as specially outstanding. I guess I should have seen more of them to find my favourite. From the few I saw, despite all the reservation expressed above, Larusso/Lee were probably the best find in the sense that I found two new books to read.
Looking forward to the next edition.
Oh, an in case you wonder what the 3D printed Tesla car “crashed” into one of the columns is: It is “Dark Adaptation” by Felicity Hammond.
