"Without Us" - Ringvorlesung im Sommersemester 2026

It is the year 2026 and we have tried out all the keyboard shortcuts, helping to create a world in which our presence is barely needed.

Computer users have generated enough data and uploaded a multitude of videos, photos, texts and documents so that meaningless AI garbage can now spread and the so-called "dead internet" in the form of bots and automated algorithms only continues to exist like a zombie. The web, which we once saw as a stage for our diverse selves, has become much smaller: Data can be stored and reused more easily.

Curated by Olia Lialina, net artist, Professor of New Media and Post-digital Cultures at the Merz Akademie; author of Digital Folklore, Turing Complete User and From My to Me.

All lectures will be held in English.
Dates, each at 18:15 in the auditorium of the Merz Akademie:

28.04.: Gabriele De Seta, technology sociologist, NO | Algorithmic folklore: Old patterns, new phenomena

05.05.: N.B. Spiders, electronic artist, game developer, DE | DIY HRT and other profane machines for punishment and pleasure

12.05.: Martina Menegon, digital artist, curator (IT/AT) | Becoming Chimeric

19.05.: Cade Diehm, digital security expert (IR/AU) | Who will remember us?

26.05.: Danja Vasiliev, Emerging Media Professor (DE) | Inaugural Lecture: The potted history of Algorithmic Art