By Karola Köpferl, Albrecht Kurze
Part of State of Responsible Tech 2025, Generative Things
Köpferl, K., Kurze, A. (2025). Machines, AI, and the Past//Future of Things. In RIOT 2025, State of Responsible Tech – Generative Things (pp. 13-19). Stichting ThingsCon Amsterdam
https://thingscon.org/publications/riot-2025/machines-ai-and-the-past-future-of-things/
Abstract (generated)
This study explores the intersection of generative artificial intelligence and obsolete material technologies through a techno-artistic intervention: the augmentation of a 1980s East German typewriter with a contemporary large language model (LLM). Situated within critical design, media archaeology, and human-computer interaction, the Erika project reconfigures a once-bureaucratic machine into a site of speculative inquiry. By reintroducing friction, latency, and material presence, the project challenges dominant narratives of frictionless AI integration and renders algorithmic processes experientially accessible. The authors argue that hacking—conceived not merely as technical modification but as epistemic method—can expose the cultural assumptions embedded in digital infrastructures. Engaging concepts such as zombie media and technostalgia, the paper demonstrates how retrofitting obsolete devices with generative AI serves as a critique of presentist technoculture and a catalyst for alternative imaginaries. The Erika installation exemplifies how slow, noisy, and tactile interfaces can foreground issues of trust, temporality, and embodied cognition in human-AI relations. Ultimately, the authors propose that the reanimation of past technologies can operate as both disruption and invitation: to reframe intelligent systems as historically situated, materially contingent, and politically legible.