When seamless systems meet the physical world

What happens when we leave the smooth, optimised route and allow technology to take us somewhere less predictable?

In The Scenic Route, published in DAMN°93, Daniel Friedman brings together artists and designers who reintroduce uncertainty, friction and hands-on experimentation into the digital landscape.

Luna Maurer and Roel Wouters make room for unpredictability; !Mediengruppe Bitnik disrupts efficiency; Angelo Plessas explores collective disconnection; James Bridle treats AI as an assistant rather than an authority; Darsha Hewitt makes technology tangible, fallible and shared; and Ebru Kurbak reimagines the forms of knowledge that technological history has overlooked.

Within this wider journey, LarbitsSisters: Reshaping Systems looks at the friction that emerges when technological systems encounter matter, energy and living processes. Through Photosynthesising Flowerpots and Crypto Miner Car, the article raises a question that runs through our practice: what does technology owe to the materials, ecologies and people on which it depends?

The Scenic Route appears in DAMN°93, The Rub: Friction and Smoothness.

Thank you to Daniel Friedman and the DAMN team for including our work in this conversation.

Discover DAMN°93