We speak with Anna Engelhardt to discuss Russian colonialism/decolonization, Adversarial Infrastructure/GANs, Deep Fakes, and Reputational Volatility.

Anna Engelhardt is the alias of a research-based media artist and writer. Her practice examines infrastructures of post-Soviet cyberspace through a decolonial lens, with an overarching aim of dismantling Russian imperialism. These investigations—often produced in collaboration—take on multiple forms of media as they develop, including videos, websites, software interventions, and hardware interfaces. In tandem, Anna pursues writing, lecturing, and publishing to promote decolonial approaches to cyberspace and to situate digital conflicts within a broader colonial enterprise. Her works and activities have featured at transmediale 2022, Venice Biennale Architettura 2021, Ars Electronica 2020, Strelka Magazine, 67th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, and Kyiv Biennial 2021.

Adversarial Architectures w/Anna Engelhardt

We speak with Justin Joque concerning Cyberware, SQL Injections and their relation to Derrida and Deleuze. Additionally, we focus on his new work Revolutionary Mathematics tracing the genealogy of statistics, the role of Bayesianism and the potential constructive counter-possibilities and strategies that shift the dominant course of Machine Learning.

Justin Joque researches philosophy, technology and media and is the visualization librarian at the University of Michigan. He is the author of Revolutionary Mathematics: Artificial Intelligence, Statistics, and the Logic of Capitalism (Verso 2022) and previously Deconstruction Machines: Writing in the Age of Cyberwar (University of Minnesota Press, 2018)

(A)UTO-DEC(O)NSTRUCTION MACHINES w/ Justin Joque

We discuss with Fabian Offert concerning Generative Models, Synthetic Data, the role of Latent Spaces and the future of General Computation from Artificial Intelligence.

Fabian is an Assistant Professor in History and Theory of Digital Humanities at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

His research and teaching focuses on the digital/computational humanities, with a special interest in the epistemology and aesthetics of computer vision and artificial intelligence.

Latent Deep Space w/Fabian Offert

Inigo Wilkins explores the transdisciplinary nature of noise in his upcoming book, Irreversible Noise(Urbanomic). His work incorporates philosophical influences from Gilles Deleuze, Wilfred Sellars, Thomas Metzinger, Francois Laruelle, and Rene Thom, complemented by a focus on an array of fields such as complexity theory, cognitive science, and AI. His work also surveys the evolution of sonic noise within the 20th century to contemporary articulations of 'fugitive noise', conjured by hauntological encounters and diagrammatic gestures.

Inigo Wilkins is a writer and lecturer (CalArts, New School for Research and Practice) working across many disciplines (sonic culture, cognitive science, philosophy, and finance). He is co-director of the online journal Glass Bead, and has published articles in such journals as Litteraria Pragensia, Mute Magazine, and HFT Review.

Irreversible Noise 2.0 w/ Inigo Wilkins (Updated)

M. Beatrice Fazi's work surveys and interweaves the philosophy of computation, contingency, aesthetics, Deep Learning, and with her book Contingent Computation (2018) forges a dialogue between an array of thinkers including A.N. Whitehead and Gilles Deleuze in a bid to explore aesthetics as a mode of investigating contemporary computational systems.

M. Beatrice Fazi is Reader in Digital Humanities in the School of Media, Arts and Humanities at the University of Sussex, United Kingdom. Her primary areas of expertise are the philosophy of computation, the philosophy of technology and the emerging field of media philosophy. Her research focuses on the ontologies and epistemologies produced by contemporary technoscience, particularly in relation to issues in artificial intelligence and computation and to their impact on culture and society. She has published extensively on the limits and potentialities of the computational method, on digital aesthetics and on the automation of thought. Her monograph Contingent Computation: Abstraction, Experience, and Indeterminacy in Computational Aesthetics was published by Rowman & Littlefield International in 2018.

Tracks by Topdown Dialectic: https://peakoil.bandcamp.com/album/s-t
Paperclip Minimiser: https://paperclipminimiser.bandcamp.com/album/paperclip-minimiser

Contingent Computation w/M. Beatrice Fazi(Updated)

We discuss with Joshua Dávila a.k.a. The Blockchain Socialist with respect to carving out alternative avenues for the application of Blockchain that wrest it away from the strands of deterministic techno-libertarianism, his critique of The Network State, and seeding the prospects of Coordi-Nations.

Joshua Dávila has been working in the blockchain space for the past five years in Europe and has been anonymously moonlighting as the one behind The Blockchain Socialist blog and podcast. He is also the co-director of the upcoming documentary Crypto Futures which explores the alternative economic imaginaries of the crypto ecosystem that the mainstream media doesn’t cover.

Tracks: 
Nahash: https://svbkvlt.bandcamp.com/album/a-snake-in-your-house
mmph: https://svbkvlt.bandcamp.com/album/harvest
Gorgonn:https://svbkvlt.bandcamp.com/album/six-paths
33EMYBW-Arthropods: https://svbkvlt.bandcamp.com/album/arthropods

Blockchain Radicals w/Joshua Dávila a.k.a. The Blockchain Socialist

We discuss with Alexandre Monnin concerning his work that explores Dark Actor-Network Theory, Negative Commons, Inheritance of Ruined Worlds, and interest in Non-Human entanglements.

Music by:

Perila-How Much Time it is Between You and Me?
Flora Yin Wong- Sacro Bosco
KMRU - Solace

Alexandre Monnin is Scientific Director of Origens Media Lab, co-founder of the Closing Worlds initiative and associate professor at ESC Clermont BS business school. He heads the "Strategy & Design for the Anthropocene" Master of Science program, run jointly with Strate Ecole de Design in Lyon (France).
Prior to this, he was a researcher at Inria (2014-2017), a junior fellow at IKKM (Bauhaus University, 2013) and Web Research Manager at the Institut de Recherche et d'Innovation du Centre Pompidou (2010-2013).
A.M. holds a PhD in Philosophy from Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, his thesis focused on the philosophy and architecture of the Web. He co-edited a book on the subject, Philosophical Engineering. Towards a Philosophy of the Web (Wiley Blackwell, 2013) as well as an issue of the journal Intellectica (n°61, "Philosophie du Web et Ingénierie des connaissances"). He is one of the co-authors of the report Pour une sobriété numérique published by the Shift Project in 2018. He has also co-edited special issues in the journals Multitudes (n°76 with Laurence Allard and Cyprien Tasset, "Est-il trop tard pour l'effondrement?"), Sciences du Design (n°11, "Anthropocène et effondrement", with Laurence Allard), Passerelle (n°21: "Low-tech: face au tout numérique, se réapproprier les technologies") and the journal SociologieS ("Du pragmatisme au méliorisme radical", with Antoine Hennion).
With Diego Landivar and Emmanuel Bonnet, he published Héritage et Fermeture with Éditions Divergences in May 2021, edited Écologies du Smartphone with Laurence Allard and Nicolas Nova (Bord de l'eau, 2022), and wrote on his own Politiser le Renoncement, also published by Éditions Divergences (2023).

Inheriting Negative Commons w/Alexandre Monnin(Updated)

We discuss with Landscape architects Bradley Cantrell and Zihao Zhang the marriage of Speculative Design, Machine Learning, Landscape Architecture, Xenopatterning, and Modeling.

Bradley Cantrell is a landscape architect and scholar whose work focuses on the role of computation and media in environmental and ecological design.He has held academic appointments at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, The Rhode Island School of Design, and the Louisiana State University Robert Reich School of Landscape Architecture. His work in Louisiana over the past decade points to a series of methodologies that develop modes of modeling, simulation, and embedded computation that express and engage the complexity of overlapping physical, cultural, and economic systems. Cantrell’s work has been presented and published in a range of peer-reviewed venues internationally including ACADIA, CELA, EDRA, ASAH, and ARCC.

Zihao Zhang, PhD is an assistant professor of landscape architecture at the City College of New York. By building transdisciplinary, critical analyses at the intersections among design, engineering, and environmental humanities, he investigates interspecies entanglements and interrogates conceptions of humans, nature, and technology in contemporary culture. He studies emerging cybernetic technologies and their ramifications on the constructed environment to expand designers’ understanding of the co-production between machines and ecologies and inspire innovative landscape strategies. Zihao holds a PhD in the Constructed Environment and an MLA from the University of Virginia, as well as a Bachelor of Engineering in Landscape Architecture from Beijing Forestry University.

Cultivated Wildness & Xenopatterning w/Bradley Cantrell & Zihao Zhang(Updated)

Orit Halpern discusses her latest book, co-authored by Robert Mitchell, the Smartness Mandate, which surveys the confluence of the logic of smartness tied to catastrophe, demoing, temporality, populations, and ubiquitous computing.

The Mandate Dem(o)ing of Catastrophe w/Orit Halpern

Adam Jones from Acid Horizon join us to discuss the work of insurrectionary philosopher Max Stirner, Acid Horizon's book Anti-Oculus: A Philosophy of Escape, and his new introduction for a republication of Mark Fisher's Flatline Constructs.

The Unique Awakens w/Adam Jones from Acid Horizon(Updated)

David Roden takes us through the viscous labyrinth of Speculative Posthumanism, Disconnection Thesis, Sonic Ontology and Agency, and his recent work, Xenoerotics.

David Roden's published work has addressed the relationship between deconstruction and analytic philosophy, philosophical naturalism, the metaphysics of sound, and posthumanism. His works include Posthuman Life: Philosophy at the Edge of the Human(2014), Snuff Memories (2021), Xenoerotics(2023).

Cold Reading

Posthuman Xenophilia w/David Roden

Miguel Prado Casanova surveys the prospect of different “contextures” of a present made volatile by noise. Informed by many different fields of contemporary science in order to surveys the role of randomness and noise through domains such social, biological, computational and physical systems as well as the control of uncertainty and prediction.


Miguel Prado Casanova is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy in the Department of Social Sciences at UWE. His main work resides at the intersection of philosophy, sound art, science & technology. He responds to the technoscientific and social conditions around the notions of control, uncertainty and information theory, about how noise brings into crisis the division between activity and passivity, between knowing and feeling. He researches the problems of the metascientific and ideological foundations of diverse projects of prediction and control of uncertainty. From algorithmic surveillance back to cybernetics and how these render noise “informationally heretical”.

Noxiogenesis: Noise in Noise w/Miguel Prado Casanova

Anna Greenspan, a former member of CCRU and a media scholar, has written a thought-provoking book titled "China and the Wireless Undertow: Media as Wave Philosophy." In this book, Greenspan explores the intricate relationship between China and wirelessness, combining contemporary media theory with modern Chinese thought. By doing so, she sheds light on the philosophical, techno-social, and temporal implications of wireless communication within an evolving geopolitical landscape.

Anna Greenspan is Assistant Professor of Global Contemporary Media at NYU Shanghai. She is the author of Shanghai Future: Modernity Remade (Oxford University Press, 2014), India and the IT Revolution: Networks of Globalization (Palgrave, 2005). She also writes for a non-academic audience including these three books: Ccru: Writings 1997-2003 (Urbanomic, 2015), Future Mutations: Technology and the Evolution of the Species (Time Spiral Press, 2014) and Urbanatomy: Shanghai 2008 (China Intercontinental Press, 2008).

The Wireless Undertow w/Anna Greenspan

Science Fiction author Peter Watts, who is the author of the Rifters novels (Starfish, Maelstrom) and the Firefall series (Blindsight, Echopraxia), joins us. He surveys the frontiers of the accidence of consciousness, free will, organoid intelligence, evolution, and artificial intelligence in this discussion.

Peter Watts is a former marine biologist, flesh-eating-disease survivor and convicted felon whose novels—despite an unhealthy focus on space vampires—have become required texts for university courses ranging from Philosophy to Neuropsychology.

His work is available in 21 languages, has appeared in over 350 best-of-year anthologies, and been nominated for over 50 awards in a dozen countries. His (somewhat shorter) list of 20 actual wins includes the Hugo, the Shirley Jackson, and the Seiun.

Survival Engines w/ Peter Watts

We are joined by philosopher and theorist Vincent Lê whose work explores the conjunction of artificial & synthetic intelligences, Cyberfeminism, Accelerationism, Austrian economics, and cuteification in the wake of catastrophe.

The Discreet Charm of Machinic Will w/Vincent Lê

Diffractions Collective (Dustin Breitling and Vit Van Camp) and SDBS (Sebastian Chum & and our gratitude to Tomáš Mládek for recording) interview Miroslav Griško (Collaborator with Slovenian based ŠUM Journal) about teleology, war, and eschatology.

Miroslav Griško: Absolute Katabasis(Updated)

We are joined by Artist, Performer, and Theorist Mattin dialoguing about the nature of noise as a phenomenon and its potential role for informing social practice. How can we conceive of 'Alienation' as such, as a social practice?

Social Dissonance W/ Mattin(Updated)

We discuss with Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh about the nature of Omnicide, Philosophy After Dark, Seduction and Deception. Interview by Dustin Breitling

OmniSeductions w/ Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh(Updated)

We are joined by Frank B. Wilderson III to discuss 'Afropessimism' and the broader developments of his work. Interview by Dustin Breitling.

Afropessimism w/Frank B. Wilderson III(Updated)

We are joined by philosopher and artist based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil J.P. Caron, to discuss the nature of Generative Aesthetics, Time-Stretching, CCRU, and scale-sensitivity.

Music from his work included here: https://seminalrecords.bandcamp.com/ 
https://jpcaron.bandcamp.com/
https://soundcloud.com/j-p-caron

Transcendental Time-Stretching w/J.P. Caron(Updated)

We are joined with Colin Drumm to discuss the evolution of the Modern Monetary System and the works of Shakespeare serving as seismographs that reflect changes in conceptions related to currency, debt, and sovereignty. We also discuss about Modern Monetary Theory and its implications in the wake of Covid.

Colin Drumm is a PhD candidate in the History of Consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is currently writing a dissertation on the topic of monetary history and political philosophy, with a focus on Mediterranean antiquity and early modern England.

Shakespeare & The Modern Monetary System w/ Colin Drumm

We sit down and interview Keti Chukhrov about her book "Practicing the Good: Desire and Boredom in Soviet Socialism" to discuss libidinal economy and its transform from Soviet Socialism to Neo-Liberal Market Reforms. Also, we discuss the concepts of 'Non-Self' tied up with Evald Ilyenkov and Russian Cosmism.

Keti Chukhrov is an associate professor at the Department of Сultural Studies at the National Research University Higher School of Economics. In 2012-2017 she has been the head of Theory and Research department  at the National Center of Contemporary Art, Moscow. Chukhrov has authored numerous texts on art theory, culture, politics, and philosophy. Her postdoctoral dissertation dealt with the anthropology and ontology of performativity. Her full-length books include: To Be—To Perform. ‘Theatre’ in Philosophic Critique of Art (Spb: European Un-ty, 2011), and Pound &£ (Logos, 1999) and a volume of dramatic writing: Just Humans (2010). Currently she is a Marie Sklodowska fellow in UK. Her present research interests and publications deal with 1.the impact of soviet economy on the ethical epistemes of historical socialism, with 2. performance studies and 3. Neo-humanism in the conditions of post-human theories. With her video-play “Love-machines” she participated at the Bergen Assembly and “Specters of Communism” (James Gallery, CUNY, NY, 2015). Her Latest video-play “Communion” was in the program of the Kansk video film festival (Moscow, 2016) and at the Ljubljana Triennial U-3 “Beyond the Globe (2016, cur. B. Groys) Practicing the Good
Desire and Boredom in Soviet Socialism (2020, Minnesota Press) and numerous E-Flux articles here: https://www.e-flux.com/search?q=Keti+Chukhrov

Soviet Non-Libidinalism & Cosmism/Keti Chukhrov(Updated)

Thanks to everyone who listened to // DIFFRACTIONS // Podcast over the years. There will be no further podcasts, nonetheless, please follow us here:
https://diffractionscollective.com

Several tracks have been re-uploaded with enhanced sound quality. Thank you to those who listened and will continue to do so from the future into the past.

DIFFRACTIONS

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