Art Is Not a Thing

Art Is Not a Thing

Ars Electronica

Episodes 22
Avg. Duration 27m
Activity Highly Active
Since Nov 2023
Latest Episode Jan 2026

Publishing Details

Schedule
Monthly
Format
Episodic
Consistency
94%
Hosting
feeds.buzzsprout.com

Contact & Outreach

About This Podcast

Art Is Not a Thing is a podcast series about art as a practice of critical inquiry, knowledge production and world-building. From media art, bio-art, sound art to digital activism, speculative design, or data storytelling, the series delves into artistic work that reflects on, questions, and reimagines our practices in and of the world. 

 

The series is developed in collaboration with Radio Ö1. 


Host: Hannah Balber
Producers: Ana-Maria Carabelea, Christopher Sonnleitner, Marlene Grinner
Editing: Hannah Balber, Ana-Maria Carabelea

Music: Karl Julian Schmidinger

Design: Jelena Mönch

 




Podcasting 2.0 Features

person transcript txt

Social Media

Explore Statistics

Recent Episodes

S2E8 The Politics of Seeing and Being Seen

Jan 31, 2026 20m Transcript

Using both the conditions and limitations of the photographic medium, Trevor Paglen's investigations into state surveillance, military operations, and data collection raise questions about truth,…

S2E7 Computational Compost: Against the Resource Intensivity of Data Centers

Dec 29, 2025 21m

In this episode, Hanna Balber talks with architect Marina Otero Verzier about the environmental cost of data centres. Challenging the image of the 'cloud' as an immaterial entity, her project,…

S2E6 System Vulnerability

Nov 30, 2025 17m

In this episode, Hannah talks to German media artist Simon Weckert about the societal impacts of digitalisation and his artistic strategies to disrupt, redirect, or reduce the logic of systems to…

S2E5 Post-truth Museums and Their Post-colonial Directors

Oct 31, 2025 22m

In this episode, Hannah Balber talks to German-Iraqi artist Nora Al-Badri about the colonial inscriptions borne by Europe’s cultural heritage. Her work, The Post-truth Museum, reignites seemingly…

S2E4 Imaginative Futuring for Social Change

Sep 30, 2025 20m

In this episode, Hannah talks to members of the Kairos Futura collective from Nairobi, Ajax Axe, Abdul Rop and Willie Ng'ang'a. Their project, The Wild Future Lab, won this year's S+T+ARTS Prize…

S2E3 Robotic Journeys through the Andes

Aug 31, 2025 20m

In this episode, Hannah talks to Golden Nica winner Paula Gaetano Adi about Guanaquerx, the first robot in history to cross the Andes Mountains. More than a technical object, Guanaquerx is a poetic,…

S2E2 Outsourcing Ethics: A Robot Speaks Our Violence

Jul 31, 2025 18m

In the podcast episode, Hannah talks to artists Thomas Kvam and Frode Oldereid about their installation Requiem for an Exit - a piece featuring a towering robot delivering a haunting monologue about…

S2E1 Web of AI: Linking Homes and Battlefields

Jun 30, 2025 18m Transcript

In today's episode, we talk to Sarah Ciston about their award-winning project, AI War Cloud Database. The project visualises the links between everyday life technologies and military infrastructure,…

S1E12 Making Kin: Cells, Software, Synthetic Selves

May 31, 2025 36m Transcript

In today’s episode, we are joined by artists Charlotte Jarvis and Zoran Srdić Janežič, and writer, educator, and curator Rick Dolphijn to discuss entities at the intersection of wetware, software,…

S1E11 Touching Memories

Apr 29, 2025 32m

In this episode, host Ana Carabelea talks to Yulia Sion, Nuno Correia, and Michael Banissy about the power of haptics and sound in recreating and conveying memories, as a way to build empathy and…

S1E10 Virtually Real: Writing Transmedia Spaces

Mar 31, 2025 41m Transcript

In this episode we talk to Lara Lesmes + Fredrik Hellberg of Space Popular, Pierre Christophe Gam, and Brooklyn J. Pakathi about spaces - private, public, real, virtual, but most importantly…

S1E9 Labour in the Greenhouse: Reaping the Fruits of Automation

Feb 27, 2025 40m Transcript

Greenhouses are sites of encounter between humans, plants, and machines, as well as socio-economic and geopolitical regimes. Within them, intricate stories of our day-to-day food production are…

S1E8 Computation, Improvisation, Narration

Jan 30, 2025 37m Transcript

The stories we tell about, with, or for technologies matter. Can we demystify misnomers such as artificial intelligence through storytelling, role-playing, and improvisation? In this episode, we talk…

S1E7 Love and the City

Nov 30, 2024 28m Transcript

What happens when our public behaviour is constantly monitored? Do we still hug, kiss, or allow ourselves to be vulnerable in public, does it stop us from being at our worst? In this episode, we talk…

S1E6 Operational Hoaxes

Sep 30, 2024 33m Transcript

It’s easy to discard fakes and hoaxes as misinformation. But that might be too abrupt an ending to a discussion about the aesthetics of non-fact and the role of synthetic images in our visual…

S1E5 There's Hope at the Edges of Power

Jul 31, 2024 36m Transcript

In today's episode, we talk to Meredith Whittaker of Signal and artist Calin Segal about what surveillance and the concentration of power in the hands of a few tech companies mean for society. We…

S1E4 Regendering Technology

May 30, 2024 33m Transcript

In this episode, we look at the historical entanglements of technology and gender. Made in the image of their (often male) designers, technologies end up serving and reproducing patriarchal systems.…

S1E3 Truth Preachers

Mar 20, 2024 32m Transcript

The changes in how information is collected, produced, and disseminated leave their mark on the way information is consumed. This episode unpacks the qualitative shifts the algorithmic dissemination…

S1E2 Truth Makers (Part II)

Jan 30, 2024 27m Transcript

In this episode, we discuss how the data sets used in machine learning adopt hegemonic discourse and existing biases and, what’s more, amplify them, and we talk to some of the people out there who…

S1E2 Truth Makers (Part I)

Jan 30, 2024 42m Transcript

In this episode, we discuss how machine learning and artificial intelligence adopt hegemonic discourse and existing biases and, what’s more, amplify them, and we talk to some of the people out there…

Frequently Asked Questions

How many episodes does Art Is Not a Thing have?

Art Is Not a Thing has published 22 episodes since November 2023, covering topics in Arts, Society & Culture.

Is Art Is Not a Thing still active?

Art Is Not a Thing is currently highly active with new episodes monthly. Average episode length is 27m.

How do I contact Art Is Not a Thing for sponsorship or guest appearances?

Sign up on Grep.FM to access contact details for Art Is Not a Thing, including email and social media links.

Similar Podcasts