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Based on the experience of the first lockdown in 2020, a narrative was created in which the Rosa-luxemburg Platz is seen as hermetically sealed from the rest of the world. It thus becomes the ultimate setting in a future in which humanity no longer leaves its homes and can only remember a past civilization that still had a public sphere based on information about its immediate living space.

The NABLA performance/tour takes place live on site and is a kind of “Performative Introduction” to the discourse surrounding the area, the Podcast tells a different story with a real background in videos with audio plays in each episode, and the Fandom, in turn, represents an online encyclopedia with space for all facts about the area written from the perspective of the future. This is an excellent example of how performance art, storytelling, archives and urban exploration can not only co-exist but also reinforce each other.

My objective in this secondment was to initiate some practical experiments in ‘ethnographic AI’, which I define as an investigation into whether artificial intelligence can gain specific cultural understandings. Engaging with Festival dei Popoli’s ethnographic film archive online and on-site, I used ml5.js to create experiments in AI image classification, image and video generation, pose tracking, and object identification.

I also included experiments in creating randomised compositions, using the Festival’s archive of posters and programme leaflets. Alan Turing, in his 1950 paper ‘Computing machinery and intelligence’, proposes that randomness might be an important element of creativity.

In using the coding environment ml5.js, I uses small, portable datasets for two reasons: (1) to explore whether small, highly curated datasets could facilitate specific cultural understandings; and (2) to mitigate the high environmental cost of AI by minimising processing and network operations.

The work raises questions about AI in terms of identifying, classifying and describing humans in terms of what and who is seen, and what can be inferred from individual and collective actions. Also, the training datasets used in many existing AI systems (including the ones I used) are very limited and culturally-specific, for example in the objects they are capable of recognising. This relates to the programmer’s expression ‘Garbage In Garbage Out’ which describes how the outputs of a system depend on the quality of its inputs. I found that the ‘seams’ in AI systems – for example the unnatural joins between surfaces in images, or the artificial ways Large Language Models attempt to replicate human writing – expose the artificiality of such systems, yet perhaps keeping these seams visible is important for maintaining transparent AI systems.

I made all my code freely available – the code and the experiments can be viewed at https://ai.postdigitalcultures.org

The project for this secondment consists of carrying out research on the geographical site that the Mexican Embassy in Berlin occupies today, its transformation over the years, especially during the 20th century and its probable problematic history. I am interested in researching urban palimpsests and the layers of memory of places, whether present or destroyed.

As a PhD candidate at the Royal College of Art, a British institution, I am interested in investigating this area of Berlin, since the land that I am studying belonged to the British Sector in the years following the Second World War (1945-1949). I will look at events that took place at that time and in that specific site, linking it later with the events that took place before and during the war, the History of West Germany, Unified Germany, and the origins of the Mexican Embassy there in 2001, the construction of the building, its symbols, and its relationship with the architecture of the Bauhaus.

In this research, I will experiment with the methods that I am applying for my doctoral thesis. The methodologies used are critical, empirical, and embodied.

From this transdisciplinary investigation that is taking place over two summers, (13 days in July 2023 and 18 days in July 2024), I will create sculptures, videos, and texts that will be included in my thesis, in publishable articles and an exhibition.

This research questions erasure and oblivion in the history of Mexican diplomacy in Berlin. My aim is to create visibility to the layers of memory contained in the space that the Mexican Embassy in Berlin occupies today, opening doors to stories that include Germany, the United Kingdom, Mexico, and perhaps other countries.

My Space X secondment in Berlin is taking place with the Kunstverein am Rosa Luxemburg Platz with the additional support of the Mexican Embassy in Berlin. The research will culminate with an exhibition presented at one or both spaces.