GIJON.- Machines, through their interaction with humans and nature, revolutionize the world. From the power loom and the steam engine, the electric generator and the microchips, to the Internet and its data centers and planetary-scale computing systems that characterize the present era.

This exhibition invites to explore, in an amazing way, the digital machines shaping industry and society today. Through detailed visual narratives, we will discover for example, how the algorithm of the world’s largest social network works; how the exploitation of natural resources and human labor supports an artificial intelligence device; and how communication, computation, classification and control systems have evolved since 1500.

But this exhibition also invites you to discover alternative digital machines that imagine other possible relationships between technology, industry and society. From “codes of conscience” that restricts the use of heavy-duty vehicles in protected forests, to artificial vision systems that count gestures of care in public space. From citizen speculative cartography machines, to artifacts that recover our digital attention in the face of misinformation.

In a 21st century in which democracy, industry and the digital realm are increasingly interconnected, the thirteen works on display here question the current architecture of innovation processes to make a case for the long-term environmental and societal impacts to be considered in designing fair, ethical and sustainable digital machines in the future.

Artists: Vladan Joler, Kate Crawford, Calin Segal, Martyna Marciniak, AKQA, Noemí Iglesias, Space Popular, Sonya Isupova, Gordan Savičić and Felix Stalder, Elisa Cuesta, Juan Cañada and Juan Gama, Katarzyna Szymielewicz.

Curated by: Pablo de Soto

This exhibition is part of European Digital Deal, an investigation (2023-2025) lead by Ars Electronica and co-funded by Creative Europe, into how the accelerated, yet at times unconsidered adoption of new technologies—such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, blockchain and algorithmic processing—can alter or undermine democratic processes.