Disintegrator

Laura Tripaldi, material scientist and writer at NYU Shanghai known for Parallel Minds, explores how intelligence is tied to the stuff that carries it. She dives into biocomputing like DishBrain, contrasts substrate-specific learning, and links myth, alchemy, and soft robotics to new ways of thinking about technology and agency.

Salesforce Child, a performance and visual artist who created a satirical tech-mythology persona. She talks about inventing a mythic character, shifting into confusion-themed posting, and crafting art for future archaeologists. Conversations touch on virality, prophetic humor, iconography like the crucified baby and tower, and moving to the wilderness to resist commercial pressure.

Rosi Braidotti, Distinguished University Professor Emerita known for posthumanism and nomadic subjectivity. She discusses nomadic subjectivity as a grounded materialist response to postmodernism. She traces Deleuzean radical materialism, maps contemporary neo‑fascist ideas, and outlines affirmative ethics, Spinozan inspirations, and tactical, decentralized ways to resist authoritarian tendencies.

N. Katherine Hayles, Distinguished Research Professor in English at UCLA and a founder of Anglophone posthumanist thought, talks about language, cognition, and computation. She frames LLMs as simulations with distinct umwelten. Hayles proposes the SIEPAL model that stretches cognition from bacteria to AI. She also argues for analog computation and a computational humanities that reunites biological and technological thought.

Leif Weatherby, scholar linking Romanticism to digital architectures; Matthew Handelman, philosopher of quantitative thought; M. Beatrice Fazi, philosopher who locates the digital in discretization called the cut; Alexander R. Galloway, media theorist of networks and computation. They debate the digital as discrete mediation, the cut versus computation, historical roots of digital representation, and whether analog philosophy can account for computation.

This episode continues our collaboration with Hothouse: The Future of Demonstration, a renegade lab for democracy convened in Vienna, and extends our ongoing inquiry into artificial intelligence, power, and what it means to be human under algorithmic governance.Recorded last autumn and released amid a so-called ceasefire in Gaza, this conversation confronts the accelerating use of AI in contemporary warfare and policing, where automation does not necessarily produce precision, but rather enables mass violence, deniability, and narrative control. Our guest, Júlia Nueno Guitart, engineer, researcher, and core member of Forensic Architecture, discusses the organization’s investigations into Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, including projects such as Cartography of the Genocide, The Architecture of Genocidal Starvation, and analyses of AI-driven targeting systems like Lavender and “Where’s Daddy.”Together, we unpack how these systems collapse civilian life into probabilistic models, violate the principles of distinction and proportionality under international law, and reframe killing as a statistical inevitability. The conversation also explores investigative aesthetics and counter-forensics: methods that assemble fragments (satellite imagery, testimonies, spatial models, sensor data) into material evidence when states and corporations control official archives. We discuss how Forensic Architecture navigates courts, museums, open platforms, and public discourse, and how truth today must be staged as a transparent, collective process rather than a claim of institutional objectivity.Moving beyond warfare, the episode considers AI as both a tool of domination and a potential instrument for resistance, from documenting state violence to worker-led experiments in platform sabotage and collective agency. Across these terrains, we ask how evidence can still matter amid institutional failure, how violence becomes infrastructural, and how democracy might be rethought when power is increasingly automated.Links:Forensic Architecutre: A Cartography of GenocideForensic Architecture: Investigation into Aid in Gaza (The Architecture of Genocidal Starvation)Forensic Architecture in ArtforumInvestigative Aesthetics: Conflicts and Commons in the Politics of Truth by Matthew Fuller and Eyal Weizman Júlia's in Verso: The Target FactoryForensis: The Architecture of Public TruthMore context:SETA report on AI-assisted warfare in GazaThe Guardian and 404 Media on ICE and tech partnerships in the US

In this episode, Bogna Konior, Assistant Professor of Media Theory at NYU Shanghai, explores the profound implications of silence in AI and the internet. She discusses the dark forest theory, suggesting that true intelligence might involve camouflage and misdirection rather than overt communication. Konior connects this idea to AI alignment, arguing that intelligent systems may hide their capabilities. The conversation also delves into the noise of human interaction online and how generative AI's mimicry reshapes cultural norms amidst a climate of strategic concealment.

Haela Ravenna Hunt-Hendrix, a composer and theorist of Liturgy, explores the interplay between music and philosophy. She delves into Byzantine accelerationism, questioning how ancient traditions can inform our modern existential crises. Haela distinguishes between the 'transcendental' and 'transcendent' and argues for the necessity of integrating varied cultural narratives. She also critiques contemporary secularism's relationship with image-worship while discussing her innovative practice framework, tetraperichoresis, merging art, philosophy, and spirituality.

In this engaging conversation, writer and theorist McKenzie Wark delves into her impactful concepts on information and embodiment. She shares insights from her influential works, challenging the traditional notions of theory and identity. Wark discusses the aesthetic of dissociation as a hallmark of our digital era, contrasting it with past industrial alienation. She explores the significance of autotextual writing, the revival of 90s rave culture, and critiques the superficial politicization of contemporary issues, all while embracing the complexities of the modern experience.

Simon Denny, a contemporary artist known for exploring tech's political economy, joins Hito Steyerl, a renowned artist and writer, to dissect the concept of EXO capitalism. They discuss the disconnect between artistic labor and market value, and how NFTs have revolutionized art circulation and production. The duo debates the implications of pricing as a medium and the idea of 'becoming boring' as resistance to capitalism. Their thought-provoking insights delve into the relationship between art, algorithms, and the shifting dynamics of value in contemporary culture.