From drones to humanoid robots, from social media sites to search engines, we now live amongst increasingly sophisticated sense organs, constantly sensing, collecting, and deciphering every aspect of our lives. As software and systems come to appear increasingly autonomous, what is often not visible is the motivation of their creators, and the mechanisms and rulesets governing the behaviors of the “machines” themselves.

The true capabilities of the networks and systems that underpin our devices and interfaces have to be obfuscated and camouflaged, because only then can we experience their vitality and autonomy—sold as an asset to our everyday lives. And so it becomes critical to explore how this impacts on our sense of agency, placing our capacity and freedom to act under constraints.

The students from Industrial Design 2 department at the University of Applied Arts Vienna present mediations, designs, tactics, and tools that provoke and inspire us to consider the shifting forms of human agency in our fast-changing world.

Artists: Ali Kerem Atalay, Charlotte De Rafelis de Brovej, Elena Doncev, Lang Fei, Sophie Falkeis, Juliane Fink, Aleksandra Fischer, Sarah Franzl, Fabio Hofer, Lisa Hofer, Daniel Kloboucnik, Stephanie Kneissl, Ege Kökel, Maximilian Lackner, Felix Lenz, Philipp Loidolt, Mia Meusburger, Estelle Muller, Anna Neumerkel, Johanna Pichlbauer, Isabel Prade, Aleksandra Radlak, Ula Reutina, Paul Ring, Maximilian Scheidl, Florian Semlitsch, Jekaterina Shipilenko, Julia Schwarz, Ciril Trcek, Menqin Wang

Curators: Anab Jain, Nikolas Heep, Peter Knobloch, Tamas Nyilanszky, Matthias Pfeffer, Justin Pickard, Bernhard Ranner, Stefan Zinell

viennabiennale.org/en