Op & Ed
tekhnē x CLOT Magazine: Of underground frequencies, hidden infrastructures & the material life of sound
Text by Irem Erkin Materia Prima, in Latin ‘raw matter‘ or ‘first material,’ is the theme of the second issue of Tekhnē journal. Materia Prima refers, in this issue’s context, to the physical materials such as metals, minerals and electronic components that form the foundation of sound technologies. Rather than
The Day After – L.E.V. Gijón at twenty, a festival as a reading of its territory
Text by Jacobo García There is a building in Gijón that has experienced several lives. A Francoist vocational school, an emblem of post-industrial reconversion, a regional cultural complex. A heritage site declared BIC (Asset of Cultural Interest) in 2016 and added to Spain’s UNESCO Indicative List in early 2025. La
Who gets to enter the interface? On VR immersion & access
Text by Tuçe Erel Recent curatorial practices in art, science, and technology increasingly foreground questions of mediation, accessibility, and public engagement, yet their outreach often remains limited to already-specialised audiences. Medium- and large-scale exhibitions started to rely on technologically complex, immersive formats that unintentionally reproduce barriers to access, engagement, time,
Against the Experiment, exploring ten years of Backslash at Cornell Tech (Part 2)
Text by Rodrigo Guzman-Serrano In the first part of this article, I discussed the origins and evolution of Backslash at Cornell Tech, from its early incarnation as ArtFoo to its current identity as a program that pairs artists with technologists to produce finished, exhibition-ready artworks. I traced how the program’s
Technological Necropolitics, who gets to live & die online
Text by Jonathan Stein The banality of evil is now a well-known concept, developed by philosopher Hannah Arendt, to express how ordinary people can commit grotesque, inhumane acts. What she forgot to mention is that sometimes the worst instances of it take place in the US Patent and Trademark Office.
Against the Experiment, exploring ten years of Backslash at Cornell Tech (Part 1)
Text by Rodrigo Guzman-Serrano In 2023, I visited the exhibition Between Performance and Documentation: Contemporary Photography and Video from China [1], curated by Nancy Lin and Ellen Avril at Cornell’s Johnson Museum of Art in Ithaca, N.Y. Near the end of the exhibition, amongst photographs and videos documenting performance art
AMRO 2026: ‘Becoming Unreadable’ fosters aesthetics & cultural practices of resistance against computational depletion & totalising AI
Text by Davide Bevilacqua & Martina Pizzigoni In times of AI-aided war, what are the cultural forms that help us understand and perhaps challenge the leading ideologies of networked technologies? And which strategies and methods can act as a foundation for a different – regenerative – logic within computing networks
Reference vs Reverence: Post-hyperpop & the rebirth of the future
Text by Leonardo Gabriel do Amaral Sometimes, when I’m feeling kind of down, I come back to Jason Farago’s opinion piece in the New York Times, “Why Culture Has Come to a Standstill.” [1] It’s more pessimistic than I usually allow myself to be, but goddamnit, it feels good to
The Plasticity of Prognosis: Tending to the Glitch in the Synthetic Habitats of Tzusoo & Yarli Allison
Text by Nam Huh The Architecture of the Already-Decided We exist within a strange temporal paradox where the future has never been more loudly discussed, but has never felt more narrow. It arrives not as an open horizon, but as a pre-packaged commodity, delivered through the cold, clean logic of
tekhnē x CLOT Magazine: Why DIY? On necessity, misuse & the conditions of making
Text by Dom Stevenson What begins as necessity – working without access, infrastructure, or permission – becomes something else: a way of engaging with tools, reshaping conditions, and reclaiming the means of production in sound and art In certain corners of artistic practice, a tacit understanding persists – sometimes expressed
‘Not Running’ by Rebecca Salvadori, the beauty of light, sound & existence
Text by Maya Elimelech We were herded into a pitch-black room, and the door shut behind us. We will begin by listening to 4’33” by John Cage. The song was silence. I could hear my breath and the breath of my friend beside me; a bag rustled, and shoes scuffed
The Day After: Sonic Acts 2026 – Melted for Love
Text by Mila Azimonti I have learned and dismantled all the words in order to draw from them a single word: Home [1]. Fragments by Mahmoud Darwish punctuate Ecoes #8, Sonic Acts’ latest publication accompanying the 2026 Biennial. His writing on exile, loss, and belonging anchors this year’s curatorial strand,
Artists as co-shapers of technological futures
Text by Daniela Silva We live in a moment when the infrastructure of our lives is being rewritten by code, sensors, and systems that most of us do not see. Artificial intelligence sorts, predicts, and governs; quantum computing promises to fracture our notions of logic; biotechnology engineers life itself; space
When we become NPCs: Trolled by Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley’s video game-based Art
Text by Eddy Gibb I’m a woke bitch–the artwork said so. The whining voice on the other side of the door hated democracy, so I shut it out. The game character berated me, but I ‘unlocked a chance for change.’ Why they would try to enter this space, devoid of
‘Is There a Speaker Inside That?’ Exploring vocal machines & voice synthesis with artists Mike McShane & Benjamin Whateley
Text by Iris Colomb Mike McShane makes sculptures out of aluminium, silicone, prosthetics, kebab boxes and air. Benjamin Whateley is a developer and computer musician whose aesthetic and process are influenced by club music. Over the past five years, these two Essex and London-based artists have been working with artificial
Curating the Present at Norient Festival 2026
Text by Mila Azimonti Curating musical expressions today can be an important calling.[i] The line catches me while I drift through Politics of Curatorship,[ii] picked up the day before from a small table of Norient publications tucked inside the festival. The task is not to anticipate what a scene will