"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 of the public lecture series in the summer semester 2026 will be held in English.
Dates, each at 18:15 in the auditorium of the Merz Akademie:

21.04.: Olga Goriunova (UK) | Ideal Subjects: The Abstract People of AI

28.04.: Gabriele De Seta, sociologist of technology, 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) | I'll Drown In The Para-Real

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