john61

This presentation examines artistic practices that engage with sociotechnical systems through tactical interventions. The talk proposes art as a form of infrastructural critique and counter-technology. It also introduces a forthcoming HackLab designed to foster collaborative development of open-source tools addressing digital authoritarianism, surveillance capitalism, propaganda infrastructures, and ideological warfare.

In this talk, media artist and curator Helena Nikonole presents her work at the intersection of art, activism, and tactical technology — including interventions into surveillance systems, wearable mesh networks for off-grid communication, and AI-generated propaganda sabotage.

Featuring projects like Antiwar AI, the 868labs initiative, and the curatorial project Digital Resistance, the talk explores how art can do more than just comment on sociotechnical systems — it can interfere, infiltrate, and subvert them.

This is about prototypes as politics, networked interventions as civil disobedience, and media hacks as tools of strategic refusal. The talk asks: what happens when art stops decorating crisis and starts debugging it?

The talk will also introduce an upcoming HackLab initiative — a collaboration-in-progress that brings together artists, hackers, and activists to develop open-source tools for disruption, resilience, and collective agency — and invites potential collaborators to get involved.

Comment · 10 months ago

This is open core. An old free fork: https://tryton.org

Comment · 10 months ago

I would call it the ELIZA bubble. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA_effect

Comment · 10 months ago

It is just the Eliza effect on a massive scale: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA_effect

Reading Weizenbaum today is eye opening: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Power_and_Human_Reaso...

Comment · 10 months ago

In Vienna, a hospital is heated by a neighboring data center using a heat pump, while the hospital cools the data center.

https://www.wienenergie.at/blog/fernwaerme-zukunft/#Abw%C3%A...

Comment · 10 months ago

There is a huge heat pump running in Vienna since 2019:

https://www.wienenergie.at/blog/staerkste-grosswaermepumpe-m...

a bigger one is planned:

https://www.wienenergie.at/ueber-uns/meilensteine/2022-spate...

Comment · 10 months ago

> The only options to get around was the expensive train system

can be cheap when you book early. Vienna -> Graz -> Vienna: ~20€

Comment · 10 months ago

LLMs are calculating probable text/code. A lot of it in very short time. Probable text/code is not the same as correct/proper text/code. It is a huge mass of probable and maybe correct/proper text/code. That is very dangerous as it looks correct but maybe it is not. It is likely that the cost of software will increase because of the unmanageable mess that this creates.

Comment · 11 months ago

> The distinction between code, config and data is being erased.

This distinction never existed in LISP. Greenspun's tenth rule in action.

Comment · 11 months ago

The year of the Linux phone in India is coming.

Comment · 11 months ago

> The argument that computational complexity has something to do with this could have merit but the article certainly doesn’t give indication as to why.

OP says it is because that predicting the next token can be correct or not, but it always looks plausible because that is what it calculates. Therefore it is dangerous and can not be fixed because it is how it works in essence.

Comment · 11 months ago

Stallman's take on the issue: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/programs-must-not-limit-freed...