Re: <nettime> Without Us

[Søren Pold via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

Dear Nettimers and Olia Lialina

I wish I was closer to Stuttgart and could come by, since I find this approach (and talks) super interesting and to the point! If there is one thing that could be added, imo, it would be something more about how we are addressed, enunciated, interpellated and generated from data and AI. I’ve written about this myself in relation to the Danish artist Ada Ada Ada who is a transgender artist who among other things are posting an image with her visible nipples at Instagram every Thursday to explore when Meta thinks she is female enough to ban her. The project is called “in transitu” and is also used as a performance to understand how she (and we) are monitored by image/gender recognition and how gender is controlled on platforms like Instagram. So I’d add her to the list! https://ada-ada-ada.art/ (and here’s the article:
Pold, S. B. (2024). PERFORMING PROFILING: Algorithmic Enunciations, transgender perspectives, and Ada Ada Ada’s in transitu. Nordic Journal of Aesthetics, 33(68), 64-88. https://doi.org/10.7146/nja.v33i68.152365)


Another artistic example of how we are addressed and enunciated by AI is Lux Affirma by Ben Grosser which is a customGPT chatbot on ChatGPT that overdoes the praising and prompting structure of chatbots, that we described in our co-written paper. It is called “Lux Affirma” and can be accessed here: https://chatgpt.com/g/g-67a2e381f0708191a7efe68bdacad562-<https://chatgpt.com/g/g-67a2e381f0708191a7efe68bdacad562-lux-affirma>lux<https://chatgpt.com/g/g-67a2e381f0708191a7efe68bdacad562-lux-affirma>-affirma<https://chatgpt.com/g/g-67a2e381f0708191a7efe68bdacad562-lux-affirma>. The paper is here: Grosser, B., & Pold, S. B. (2025). Reading the Praise/Prompt Machine: An Interface Criticism Approach to ChatGPT. I Conference Proceedings - Computing X Crisis: 6th Decennial Aarhus Conference, AAR 2025 (s. 259-271). Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/3744169.3744194

I think this chatbot makes a performance of a language with(out) us in the sense that the answer to the prompting gets diluted or totally disappears into what we’ve called the praise/prompt machine. It is nobody speaking in a language generated from us(ers) and it is highly visible because of its empty flattering.

Best wishes,

Søren Pold
From: nettime-l <nettime-l-bounces@lists.nettime.org> on behalf of olia lialina via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>
Date: Sunday, 19 April 2026 at 15.37
To: nettime-l@lists.nettime.org <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>
Cc: olia lialina <olia@profolia.org>
Subject: <nettime> Without Us

Dear Nettimers,

First of all, I’d like to invite those of you who are not too far from
Stuttgart to attend the lecture series I’m organizing this semester at
Merz Akademie.

Secondly, as you can see if you follow the link, the guests and I are
trying to create a kind of syllabus around the lectures. Do you have any
suggestions for what to add to the reading/watching/playing lists?

yours

olia

https://eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpad.profolia.org%2Fs%2FWithout_Us&data=05%7C02%7Cpold%40cs.au.dk%7C83385ea547354fa78c3008de9e18ca73%7C61fd1d36fecb47cab7d7d0df0370a198%7C1%7C0%7C639122026482590186%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=K35ExSCiapjPrpu%2BegTPFZ%2Bw1zewYtATpWgPpbpuUaY%3D&reserved=0<https://pad.profolia.org/s/Without_Us>

“With us, the adventure of becoming human has entered a new phase,”
writes philosopher Vilém Flusser in one of his most beautiful texts,
Digital Apparition. The year was 1991, and by “us” he meant “those who
sit in front of their computers,” “press the keys,” and “realize
possibilities”: “realize alternative worlds and thereby themselves.”

It is 2026. We have tried all the key combinations and helped to build
the world in which we are hardly needed anymore. Computer users have
generated enough data, uploaded enough videos, photos, texts, and
documents for AI slop to thrive and for the Dead Internet to zombie
around forever. The world we once saw as a place where we can be
ourselves — or become someone completely different — has squeezed and
evaporated our dreams, producing a concentrate, a powder: easy to store
and repurpose.

The digital today belongs to “ideal subjects” (Goriunova); non-playable
characters write their own lore (de Seta). What does it mean to be
“glitched and fragmented” (Menegon)? How does it feel to be “moss in
between the sidewalks” (N.B. Spiders)? Will “we go dark when the servers
go dark”(Diehm)?




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