Two, one, live. Okay, I think we're live. I think we're live. So welcome everybody. We are here for the first CDI stream episode of 2025, so this is pretty good. I don't know why everything has to be framed like this new year thing, this is a new year thing. I'm just repeating some stereotypes. My beginning of the year has been quite awful, I must say. Yeah, I've really struggled. So it feels already like December, but today is a good day because I was very much looking forward to welcoming Valentina Tanni to our episode.

Thank you very much. Thanks for having me.

[Applause]

Yeah, clap. Do clap. Yeah, of course! We can clap so that you know we do have a real embodied audience, like full humans. And also, of course, welcome to our global audience, tuned in from wherever in the world and in the galaxy. Welcome to the people who are now entering the room, and feel free to grab a beer. And also I was doing dry January, I was telling Michael, I was doing dry January, and I'm interrupting it for the stream.

Special occasion.

Special occasion. Because also what I really like in doing this stream is that I can drink while working. That is sort of a lifetime achievement. And today I experienced another lifetime achievement. So we met with Valentina and Rom from UKRAiNATV, StreamArtNetwork, who's with us today. And we traveled up to Coventry to reach the University of Warwick, where CDI-TV is based. And I've never met Rom in person, and he said, 'Oh, I've seen you on TV'. Guys, 'I've seen you on TV'. So I am one person to whom someone said, 'I've seen you on TV'. So this is pretty, you know, high-level achievement. Now without further ado, let's start the streaming for real. Well, the conversation with Valentina for real. I should remind you that I'm Carolina Bandinelli from the University of Warwick, and here we have Michael Dieter from the University of Warwick, and here we are, Centre for Digital Inquiry TV, CDI-TV, in collaboration with the Media Lab. Okay, so today we really do have nice visuals. And how could [it] have been otherwise when we have Valentina Tanni? Valentina Tanni, when it comes to visuals, is really the person you'd like to talk with. I realized it yesterday when I had the honour of going to the Tate Modern with her. I was so happy, I was like a child, tell me everything.

[Laughs]

Because Valentina is an art historian, a curator. She had been working in the art world and the international contemporary art scene for over 10 years. She's an author, a researcher, and currently she's working at the John Cabot University and NABA University in Italy. And throughout these different projects, what she's really been interested in is the internet cultures. So in a way, here we have someone that combines the critical lenses of art history, so the tools to really analyze the visual cultures and technology, and indeed the internet. So she's an art historian, she's passionate about internet cultures. And she's also one of those people - I'm not one of those people, but I have the impression you're one of those people - that were really there, also Michael you're one of those people, and I feel kind of deficient compared to you, because you were really there into the early internet. So-

That is true.

Right?

Yeah, yeah.

Chronically online.

Chronically online.

From the very beginning.

So you had the possibility of witnessing, in person. You've grown up with the internet. You've seen how the space of the internet developed. What has become, what will become, perhaps. So I suppose, I guess, this is also why you decided to write this book, Exit Reality, about which we're gonna talk a little more today, but tell me about your interest in internet cultures.^[1]

Yes, that's a long story, but I will try to keep it short. As you said, I've lived on the internet since the very beginning. When I got my first internet connection at home, it was 1997 I believe, and it was this very life-changing moment for me. I also talk about that in the introduction of the book. And for the younger audience here, I should mention that the internet in 1997 was a very, I don't know, archaic kind of technology. It was not that exciting. It was not like the kind of very rich, diverse internet that we have nowadays. It was kind of small and maybe seen from our point of view not that exciting, but for us it was already hypnotizing. It was a life-changing experience. So I got sucked in completely. And I wasn't a computer user before the internet. I mean, not that much. Maybe I played some video games before, but I wasn't a computer kid at all, but the internet changed me completely. I was around maybe 20 when I started going online, and I was studying art history.

Okay, and do you remember what it was about this internet thing that instantly drew you in?

Yeah, the possibilities. Like infinite possibilities. Like this portal to everything, anything, this idea of just going online and see what you can find. And also talk to people from all over the world. For us now, that's a given. Like, it's completely normal, talking to people all over the world. But at that time, it was crazy. It was like the future, it was science fiction. We just went on, like in the first few months the fun thing to do [was] just enter random chat rooms and talk to people. Like, where are you from and what you do? Who's there? Like this sense of exploration. Like the world is open. We have this portal. And also, I was studying art history, contemporary art history in Rome. And also we got access for the first time to libraries and images. For example, for an art history student, finding images of artworks before the internet, it was very difficult, like you had to spend a lot of time in libraries and sometimes travel or ask other people to send you images. It was not easy.

So you were 20, and you were...

Yeah.

...studying art history...

Yes.

...and you discover the internet...

Yes.

...and somehow these two things, art history and the internet...

Yes.

...had accompanied you. Their entanglement had...

Yeah.

...accompanied you till now. [Laughs]

Yeah, I usually say that I have a pre-modern life and a post-modern life. Like that object like completely changed - and also completely changed the course of my studies because - this will sound strange, but I was planning to graduate in medieval art history at the time...

Mm!

...so I kind of pivoted.

Kind of a shift.

Yes, and I started to study contemporary art a little bit more. And I had an amazing professor at the time, Silvia Bordini. She was one of the very first scholars in Italy to take media art seriously. So she introduced me to video art, to interactive art, in general to this idea that technology could be used to make art. And I graduated with a thesis about internet art, and that's the beginning of the story.

Because for someone that is not already familiar with internet art and the different entanglements between art and technology, it may not be that immediate, that obvious to understand: okay, what does [the] internet have to do with art and with art history? And I think this is something that in both your books, Memesthetics and Exit Reality, emerges in one of those ways that like - of course, why didn't I think about it, before this is super clear! - because, at least the way I understood it (so we are getting a little more into the book now) the internet creates a whole aesthetic in which we are immersed. We see things. It is a landscape. We can think about it as a visual landscape, as a space that has its own colours, its own codes, its own shapes and we are constantly immersed in this flow of image, and without even realizing it, we acquire those aesthetic codes. The subtitle of Valentina's book reads Vaporwave, Backrooms, Weirdcore, and Other Landscapes Beyond the Threshold. So when I read vaporware, backrooms and weirdcore, I had to Google them all because I didn't understand what they were about. Then I Googled them, and I was like, of course, I know it. I want a T-shirt with this image…

Some of them are behind us now [gesturing to the green-screen video]

And some of them- exactly.

Yes.

Some of them are behind us now. So that's a sense in which what Valentina's book does-

I'm slowly, like... I need to get back [adjusting the beanbag]

[Inaudible] yeah.

[Inaudible] in position because...

[Inaudible]

[Laughs]

But yeah. So there's a sense in which your book, in a way, is able to pinpoint and name and make sense of some of the things that are part of our space-time, of our experience. So can you tell us something more about our experience? I would say 'of our reality'. However, maybe it's something different because this book is titled Exit Reality. So perhaps we can start from the title.

Yes, so the book is my attempt to investigate and analyse internet aesthetics in general, and all the words that you mentioned that are in the subtitles are just some of the most popular, relevant internet aesthetics that we have seen emerging in the past decade or so, decade and a half maybe. And yes, I felt the need to investigate not only what artists, like professional artists, are doing with technology and around technology, but I felt the need to investigate also what general or normal users are doing online, so so-called 'user generated content'. That's more of a marketing term, but I like 'amateur' content online. I am interested in investigating what users are doing. In fact, the previous book was about memes, right?

Mm.

So it's connected in that sense. And as you were mentioning, these images, sounds, text, all these cultural expressions that people produce, collectively and spontaneously online, they say a lot about us as a society. They are kind of a way to understand our contemporary moment and the way we see the world. Like, I tend to consider art - I mean, art is a lot of things and does a lot of different things, but one of the things that I think art does is - and that is valid for amateur art and professional art also, it doesn't really matter - but what art does is to kind of help us understand the cultural atmosphere, because sometimes we unconsciously put into images and text and sounds a certain worldview, a certain sentiment about the world, right? So art sometimes is a symptom, right? And I think that since these images, sounds and texts compose internet aesthetics, since they are produced collectively, spontaneously, online by millions of people all around the world, they are probably the most kind of reliable place, the most... I don't know...

Significant.

Yes, significant, yes.

If we want to understand the spirit of the time

Like the zeitgeist and-

Outside the manifestos and...

Yes.

...canon...

Mhm.

...then perhaps what is produced by the multitude on the internet...

Yes.

..is that right?

Like internet folklore, someone would say, right?

Mm.

It's really important. So we study folklore in general. We have been studying folklore for a long time. So why not study internet folklore like, the culture that is created by users online day by day.

And - then I'll pass the mic to Michael [who] is another computer, how did you say it like post-modem, pre-modem...

Post-modem people [laughs].

...post-modem, pre-modem human.

Chronically online people.

Yeah, yeah, the chronically online [laughs]. Can I ask you... But yeah chronically online, but in a kind of a cool, deep way, because we are all chronically online right?

I don't know. I don't know. I wouldn't make that difference though. I don't know. I'm not sure.

Well this is my projection on you.

Yeah [laughs].

I'm using it to feel 'not enough' at this moment. But I want to-

You're probably saner than us, so I will take it [laughs].

Well, that is a whole debate we can talk about at dinner. But can you give us some examples of these images and aesthetic so that we can have something to think about while you go more in depth.

Yes. So, as I said, these so-called internet aesthetics are spontaneous like art movements that we see emerging online, and they are basically collections of images, writing, sounds that are created by communities of people online to try to convey a specific emotion, a specific... vibe would be the correct word to use, and it's the word that most users are using right now, sorry for the play on words. And so people are using these images and sometimes also the sound component, to evoke a specific atmosphere, to conjure a specific atmosphere, to kind of try to communicate a feeling to other people. So, in fact, it's not really about how they look. It's about how they make you feel. That's the point of internet aesthetics. It's about trying to use content and manipulate content to transmit feelings, emotions, vibes, a state of mind over the internet. It's a place where- this is another important part of the book, I talk about how our bodies are kind of left out still, like in spite of all our efforts, going online is still largely a disembodied experience. But we are bodies, and we live in space, and so since we have bodies, we try to find a way to transmit also physical sensations, and through the manipulation of the senses, you can reach other mind-states. So internet aesthetics are a lot about this. About trying to make you feel certain things, very specific emotions sometimes, very specific atmosphere. Because also internet aesthetics are created and distributed also with a memetic logic, meaning that they are modular, and also meaning that they have certain templates that people tend to reuse and change. So, in a way, they are a special kind of meme in a certain way. And what I do in the book is also try to build a little bit of a history, of course, since I'm an art historian-

Of course. You can't help, right?

Of course, yeah, exactly, I can't help. So the first internet aesthetic in history, I think, has been vaporwave. It's the first moment in which we see a specific kind- like a group of images, a style, and first of all, a genre of music, because vaporwave emerges first as a musical genre, and after also as a visual style. And vaporwave emerges in the late 2000s. So between 2009-10, and it's the first internet aesthetic that is entirely native to the web, because it's kind of the consequence of having lived online very early. So it's the music, and it's composed by sounds and images produced by people that have been growing up online. In that sense, it's the first aesthetic that is native to the internet. It's produced by the generation of people that went online in their childhood or early adolescence, so the formative period, and so it's like: for them, the internet, it's a new landscape. So it has kind of a very- it's an inspiring role. It's like, I don't know, 'the city' for the modern artists, like 'the modern city' like for for the 20th century artists, like this new…

[Inaudible]

Yes, exactly.

I think you've already partly answered the question that I was going to ask, but just to draw some links with what we're doing with CDI-TV and the StreamArtNetwork. You know, we're so happy to have you here, because our kind of approach to doing these streams is to accept the fact that now the internet is no longer just on a desktop, but is, you know, in our pockets, is around us all the time, and all space is sort of mediated in this patchwork way so that we're always bleeding into these other time-spaces. We think about this as hybridity. And so it's great to have a theorist of the aesthetics of this come to the stream. But one thing I wanted to ask just a little bit more about, this kind of historical side of things. You know, in the 90s, I'm sure you'll remember, like one of the big concepts for the internet was cyberspace.

Yes.

So how do you understand- I mean, you've sort of partly answered this, but can you say a bit more about what's the difference between that era of spatial imaginary and cyberspace and virtual reality, versus exit reality and the liminal?

Yes, so, as I said, the topic of space, together with the topic of time, are two things that I investigate a lot in the book, because they are really central. And that's true, we have been using spatial metaphors to talk about what happens online since the very early days of the internet. And so, yes, we have been talking about 'cyberspace', which is a term that comes from literature, right? From a very famous novel by William Gibson. But also other words. We have been talking about, I don't know, 'the information superhighway', which is also a spatial metaphor. And also, I don't know, 'chat rooms', if you think about it, we still say that we 'visit' websites.

Yes.

So we use it a lot, our 'desktop' is like a virtual desktop. And so we have been using these spatial metaphors since the very beginning. Because, of course, we use metaphors to kind of help people adapt to new things, new tools, new social situations, new technologies and so on, also new feelings, right? Like it's a tool that we use to try to adapt, especially when it comes to new technologies. But in the 90s, and for at least a decade, the online and the offline were considered two separate worlds. It started like that. So we had - in fact, cyberspace also was... We had cyberspace. And the opposite of cyberspace was meatspace, like the space of our 'meat' bodies, right? So it was like this very- also, people were talking about the 'real' and the 'virtual', right? As two things that are completely separate. So this was the beginning. So we felt that the internet was this other dimension in every sense. But over time, the entire perception of what the internet is has shifted. First of all because more and more people got online. So it was not just a special experience. And also we got mobile technology and WiFi connections, and this thing that we have right now, which is 24-hour connection, a non-stop connection, we are always connected. It's not just- like in the old days, people would say, "I'm going to go home and connect to the internet." Like, "No, today I can't go out because I'm going to surf the web." It was like a very like, special experience.

I remember the internet cafe.

Yes, we had internet cafes…

[Laughs]

…or special places where you would go to go online, to surf the internet, because that was the way. So in the beginning, two separate dimensions, then we realised that it was not really the case, and so we got in a new era, and the perception of the internet shifted. And now we tend to see the online and the offline as two dimensions that are not separated at all. They are continuously interacting with each other, and the online world is just another layer of the real world. It's not perceived as a separate dimension. And also we learn, sometimes at our own expense, that what happens online doesn't stay online and that we need to consider that these two dimensions are basically connected and always kind of intertwined. And so the whole perspective has changed so much. But what these aesthetics, I think, express very well is the fact that nonetheless, even if now we don't perceive the internet as a separate dimension anymore, we still kind of feel frustrated by the fact that this door, this portal, is always partially shut. We can go in, but not, for example, not with our body, not entirely. We can't teleport anywhere like we do in video games. We can't time travel.

[Inaudible] yes, yes.

It's a lot about unfulfilled promises of technology, like we have been promised time travel and teleportation.

Yes, exactly!

We don't have that.

And we ended up with Instagram!

[Laughs]

Yes, yes, it's true.

It's true, like where are the flying cars? Where are the teleport technologies?

Exactly.

I mean I don't need Google Maps, I just want [inaudible] like that.

Yes, exactly. And so I think that some of these aesthetics, they express a lot of different feelings, but one of the things that comes out, I think, very strongly, is the fact that we try to find compensating tactics to open this portal. So we use images and sounds and other media content to trigger emotions, to be in the same place mentally, together with people that are not there physically. And so in, for example, in the book I talk about ASMR, that you surely know, which is all about sensory stimulation.

Mm.

Also 'ambience' videos are extremely popular and are used by people to trigger a specific state of mind, and they also have a maybe therapeutic kind of effect. People use certain sounds or certain images also to kind of cope with certain situations, to cure themselves. In a lot of different ways. And so, yeah, and then in the second half of the book, I also talk about how you can start by just wanting to travel with your mind, but then you might want to go higher and therefore we see other phenomenon, such as the reality-shifting trend. I don't know if you have heard about it? So young…

Have you heard about it?

Reality shifting on TikTok.

Who heard about reality-shifting?

[Laughs]

Just you!

[Inaudible] I'm not alone!

Yeah, it's a trend that we have seen emerging a few years ago, especially on TikTok, but not only, also on YouTube and on other platforms. Basically, in order to make it more comprehensible, it's similar to lucid dreaming, right? It's kind of like we see these young people that really want to shift reality. They want to travel with their mind to another plane of reality, another dimension. It's also based on the multiverse theory, you know, this idea that there are infinite universes that you can travel to. And so they have been very young people. But when I say young, I mean really young - reality shifting emerged initially from people around 12, 14, like very, very young people - and that from their bedrooms they were trying to meditate and achieve like a certain kind of transcendence with their minds to shift to another reality. Maybe go to Hogwarts and meet Draco Malfoy [laughs]. They want to travel to fictional universes. You know Harry Potter? That was the ref. Yeah, and the interesting thing about reality-shifting is that in order, if you want to shift you need to script your reality in a very detailed way. You just take a piece of paper and you draft your desired reality and then you meditate, you kind of, you have to… there are a lot of so-called methods, and there's an entire movement around this. And I think that this is just maybe the higher level of this staircase, like you start maybe just with stimulating your senses, then you travel with your mind. And then you might want to try to, like, project your entire being elsewhere.

I think you're starting to cover a few areas I was specifically interested in, what are some of these vibes?

Mhm.

Some of them that you talk about are also horrific, like they come from the horror genre…

Mhm, yes.

…so I just want to encourage you a bit more to speak about - like, there's this basic kind of mechanism of wanting to, or being frustrated with this threshold, and then it gives rise to all of these different vibes. And if you're saying that there's a sort of zeitgeist here, what is this zeitgeist?

Mhm, yes.

One of the keywords in the book that comes from the world of this - I mean, internet aesthetics in general - is liminality. Maybe you might have heard of liminal spaces. That's one of the aesthetics that we see online. And it's also something that we can see in most of these aesthetics, like this fascination with places. There are known places, places where you're just supposed to pass through, or spaces that look abandoned, empty. We have one now [laughs]

The corridors.

The backrooms.

Yes, those are ‘the backrooms.’ Yeah, the backrooms are - it will take hours to explain what the backrooms are - but let's just say that the backrooms are an internet mythology that has been created by internet users, and it's this kind of horrifying place that is composed by an almost infinite number of identical rooms, all yellow, deserted, and no one is there, apparently, maybe. And that's the horrific part, because you don't know if something or someone is there, and it's kind of an infinite labyrinth. You keep going on and on, and you don't know what's there. The only thing that you can hear is just the buzzing sound of the neon lights.

And the horrifying thing about the myth of the backrooms, the meme of the backroom, is not just that the place is empty, it's the fact that you can end up there accidentally. Like, according to the original post that was published on 4chan in 2019, you can accidentally step out of reality through a process called 'no-clipping'. Yeah, no-clipping is a term that comes from gaming culture. Gaming culture is the absolute, like the main source, for most of internet aesthetics. The generation that has been raised on games, is kind of bringing most of the culture inside internet aesthetics. So you can 'no-clip' out of reality, and you end up in this terrifying place that is basically out of this world. That's why it's called the backrooms. And this entire mythology, that in a few years have produced, I don't know, I think thousands of video games, memes... There is also a movie under production.

Also the television show Severance is inspired by…

Yes…

…backrooms.

…exactly.

So it's found its way into…

Very clearly, yeah.

…quite mainstream culture.

Yes, so it has become this giant mythology. And it all started with a photograph just found online by some users, and at some point another user added a caption, and then this giant narrative. This is really fascinating. This is one of the things that I like about the internet. Like millions of people around the world, they don't know each other, they build a myth, right? Over the years. And then the backrooms got other levels. Because, like every video game, you need to also have other levels. And it became this mythology. And to go back to your question about the threshold, we seem to be talking a lot about this idea of living between things, like in this sort of liminal space in which we we feel like we're stuck and we don't know exactly where's the exit, and if there's an exit, like this sensation of being in a transitional space, but stuck in a way, right? And this is a cultural idea that starts from vaporwave. Like we can relate vaporwave with hauntology and all the work that Mark Fisher did about this idea of being culturally stuck, like this idea of being stuck in a loop, that culture is not evolving anymore, and we don't see the future.^[2] That starts with vaporwave, and it's still very much there in all the other subsequent aesthetics, this idea of liminality.

So I have a question that is, I don't know, it's kind of a personal interpretation of what you've been saying, so I don't know whether it makes sense or not, but I agree it's super interesting, this mythopoiesis - the creation of myths. And in a way, myths are created exactly as you describe, like millions of people around the world that don't know each other, and somehow a myth is originated. And one could argue that the internet remediates this process, perhaps changing the pace of it, because in the span of a few years, we have a myth that is there.

Yes.

I suppose there is one question about whether internet mythologies - so mythologies created, originated within the internet - how they percolate into the experience outside the internet? Okay, I shouldn't say "outside the internet", but we understood each other.

AFK. That's how.

AFK?

It's 'Away From Keyboard.'

Okay, away from keyboard.

That's the word we should use.

That's the way the cool kids say,

Yeah [laughs].

You know, I told ya, I showed ya. Okay, so AFK- [crosstalk]

...young people just say "in real life"...

In real life.

...even if it's outdated, but they still use it.

In real life, okay.

...that the internet is real but...

No, because I never found a way to say it, because I understand that, okay, the internet is not a separate reality.

Mhm.

But either way, it's not even, I mean, every space…

Yeah.

…is integrated, but also separated…

Mhm.

…like this is a space that is partially separated from my living room, in a way, but anyhow...

Mhm, yeah.

So this is one question.

Yeah.

And the other question is about these rooms, the back rooms, because the first time I encountered them, I was like, well, for a horror dystopia, it's not that bad. After all, it's a corridor. Like it's a corridor very similar to, I don't know, an office corridor…

Mhm.

…or a hospital corridor - which I admit, it is terrifying…

[Laughs]

….but compared to other sort of dystopian horror spaces, like I don't know- Well, perhaps the first one of the first mythologies of a horror space you can end up [in] is hell…

Yeah!

…like a place with flames in which you burn.

Mhm, mhm.

So a corridor is not that bad, but it's interesting how you know these spaces…

Mhm...

…like the non-places, to quote Marc Augé.^[3]

Yes. Yes!

…which you quote in the book, have become horrific.

Yeah.

So I suppose my question is…

Why...

…can you expand on how...

Yeah.

...the horror-fication of non-places...

Mhm.

...of a pale yellow corridor has become, like the spirit of our time, the ultimate nightmare?

Yeah, I think that there are at least a couple of reasons. The first one is that it's not just a corridor. It's a space that is so big that we don't know the exact extension of it. And the horror lies in the fact that there are all identical rooms, like randomly segmented and they're all identical, and you don't see anything. But in the original meme, the caption also says that, like you might want to be silent because something can hear you at some point. So the horror first of all lies in the fact that you don't know.

...mm, mm, mm...

You don't know if there's an exit, you don't know the extension of this place, and you don't know if someone is there.

Mm.

That's the first thing. And also it's the horror connected to the concept of infinity. You know, we as human beings, we don't deal very well with the concept of infinity, because we are finite beings. And so there's something terrifying. Think about the infinity of space, of outer space, for example, like that's some horror in there, right? This idea of being lost in a place that you don't know how big it is, and if it has an end or not. The other reason lies in the fact that liminal spaces are not just empty spaces. Liminal spaces are in the context of internet aesthetics, are spaces that we normally see crowded or inhabited, and that suddenly we see empty. There is an amazing book that I also quote: it's called The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, it’s written by John Koenig, and the book is actually a dictionary with new words.^[4] It invents new words for new feelings. And there's a word that is contained in the book and that internet users have adopted to talk about liminal spaces, and this word is kenopsia. Kenopsia, according to The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, is the feeling that you get when you'll see a place that you normally see very crowded, like bustling with life, and you suddenly see completely empty. For example, a mall deserted, or a school completely empty, a supermarket and so on, a parking spot... All these places that we normally see full of life completely empty. Seeing these places kind of gives us a weird sensation, probably unconsciously, because the question that comes to mind is, 'where is everybody?' Like, maybe something catastrophic happened. Maybe this is how the world looked like without us, or after us.

Mm.

Like, this is the unconscious kind of thought that you can have without realising it. It's about the world without us. That's a terrifying kind of feeling, I think. So I think maybe these are two things that are connected. And also, maybe one last thing very briefly, is the fact that the back rooms are - in the book, I suggest - that they can be also interpreted as a render, maybe not a natural place, but as a simulation. Maybe they have been produced by a computer program, right? And this computer program glitched, and so it keeps expanding, and maybe it will keep expanding forever. So I think that it's also connected to our fear of technology and of losing control over it. Yeah.

There's so much there, and Carolina and I have so many other questions, but I should also invite others that are here for the livestream, either in person or online, to ask any questions or make comments. While you're thinking of anything you may want to ask Valentina, I'm just going to ask a bit of - it's not quite a methods question, but it's a little bit about how you see your role as a theorist of internet aesthetics. Because it occurs to me, reading the book, that there's so many insightful examples that you pose that are already themselves theorisations of the phenomena…

Mhm, mhm.

Like the internet sort of self-theorises all of the time. So I just wonder, as you're preparing these books and thinking about what interventions you want to make, what kind of book is this, like, how do you deal with these topics, what do you add to that?

Yeah...

And in the meantime, if you want to raise your hand, I'll be ready with the mic. [Beanbag rustles]

[Laughs] Okay, are you okay? You need help? [Laughs] So, yeah, I decided to… I mean, during my work, I selected a lot of material from forums, from comments on, I don't know, the comments on YouTube videos and comments on different platforms and websites. And in the beginning, it was just material that I archived for me, because I just wanted to know a bit more. I took a sort of ethnographic approach. I wanted to be there in the forums. I also engage in conversation with users because I think that it's really important to not just describe these images or these sounds. It's important to try to explain to the reader why these images are important, why these sounds are so important to people, right? And the only way to do that, I think, is to let people - users - speak for themselves. And so the book is full of quotes that I extracted from, as I said, comments and forums and a lot of these sources, or from YouTube, Reddit, 4chan and so on. So I thought it was important to give users a direct voice, because, as you said, it is true that the internet theorises itself a lot, because a lot of users, they love to discuss the culture they build. It's something that happened from the very beginning, and there's always a lot of discussion. That's a suggestion: I encourage you to always take a look at the comments on YouTube videos, especially YouTube videos that are maybe related to some very emotional piece of music, for example. Those places are incredible. People engage in very profound conversations, and they get together, and there's this really emotional kind of thing going on. And at least for me, in this moment in time in which the internet is not an easy place at all - like now we're talking about aesthetics and the joy of being online, but we all know that there are also a lot of issues that we need to deal with, right, and that we have a lot of problems of different kinds - economical, political - it's not an easy moment, right? Technology is taking also a dark turn for a lot of reasons. So I think that exactly for this reason, it is important to also remember that people online are not - despite what the dead internet theory says - people are still online and people are still alive and still producing content and still talking to each other and kind of infusing the internet with human qualities. So, yeah. I don't think I answered the entire question, but maybe…

I will have more questions to answer now. [Laughs] Okay, so we have a couple of questions here, and one there. Should I take the three question and then... Yeah, let's do that.

Yeah, thank you. It's been great listening to you. You spoke about the early internet. So I couldn't, can't resist asking a question about that, because I also remember it as a time where the aesthetics of the internet was super important. And, in a way, it was what it was all about. And what for me was really memorable was… So I was in Amsterdam in the 90s, and there was lots of net art around...

Yeah, that was the golden age of net art, especially in Amsterdam.

Yeah it was amazing in all kinds of ways. And one of the things I remember is the collective called Jodi?

Oh, yeah. They're great.

They created this CD that when you put the CD into your computer, it would basically take over your OS, and you would watch your computer, your OS, disintegrate visually and sonically. And I really loved it. I found it really liberating.

It was, it was great. Jodi in the mid 90s, they were like the most exciting thing you could find online. Yeah.

What I wanted to ask you, I'll turn it into a question, is... So the way in which breakdown featured in early internet art, and how that could be liberating... How do you see that within the broader aesthetics of the internet? And do you think that that is something that translates to the current moment, or are we in a different place now?

We are definitely in a different place, yeah. I remember the times you were talking about very well, and actually Jodi's work was a giant part of my thesis. The thesis was about net art, and their work is central to the entire movement. We live in an entirely different internet for so many different reasons, not only from the point of view of asthetics, but in general. I think that that attitude, though - this idea of misusing technology to expose the limits, the structure, how it works, what it does - it's really important. It's something that we should bring back, because now we live in a technological world in which we are surrounded by interfaces, and some of these interfaces, they are extremely layered. So we don't see the machine anymore. We don't think about how the machine works. We don't know that, and most people tend to use the technology as intended, without asking questions about how it works, who designed it and which possible consequences of the technology can be for society. So unfortunately I would say that today that kind of 'hacker attitude' is not there that much, but I think that we are witnessing a bit of a revolt, finally. I hope. I don't know how far we are going to go with this, but I see that a lot of people, especially [the] younger generation, they are getting a little bit sick of just being on the platforms and just doing what they are told. So they are trying to find new ways of being online, but it's a very different kind of environment. And these internet aesthetics that I talk about, they are more... I would say that they are more... I mean, in an artistic sense, they are less... I don't know how to phrase it. They're not political in the way that Jodi was political. They are more concentrated on the emotional side of being online. And they're all about our feelings and how we feel, how we cope with life, more of an intimate kind of reflection on life online. It's different. Not less important, I would say, but different.

Just to say that having met Jodi a couple times in that period, they never talked about politics.

No, no. I wouldn't say politics in that sense.

I was quite frustrated because they wouldn't be interested at all in talking about...

Yeah, yeah.

...culture, society, politics. So that was also their strength…

Yeah, but they were political without addressing politics directly. But their work was highly political. They were deconstructing technology in a very radical way, and I think that that's political, like, even if they… you're right, they never talk about politics, or they never… and also they used to speak very little in general about their work [laughs]. But it was very radical. It was about deconstructing the interface, like radically. And that was, I think, political for me.

So we have another question here.

Thank you. Thank you so much. We are discussing, you are discussing, places and weird places and liminal places. And I'm just wondering, what do you think does the internet do to time, and what maybe what does time do to the internet? So, for example, this screen is broadcasting something what is happening here. But there is a gap, a time delay, right? But we cannot be really sure if it is a time delay. Maybe it's a time lapse, or maybe, well, this picture is something which will happen in a couple of seconds, so maybe it's a future too, or maybe it's a past, or maybe it's just a lapse and nothing is really happening. So I understand your book is around places, but what do you think? What does the internet do to time? Or how time and temporality and internet are related? Thank you. Thank you.

Yeah, the book talks a lot about spaces, but also about time, because time and space, we cannot separate the dimension. They are linked profoundly. In the book, a couple of times I quote Philip [K.] Dick, and this idea of time, being out of joint, is everywhere. People, users online, are very interested in this idea, not only of travelling to different dimensions, but also travelling to different points in time. So this is also very, very present, and it's true also that the experience of being online also changes our perception of time. And another thing that I talk about a lot is the fact that we also kind of time-travel artificially when we are on the internet, because now, at this point in time on the internet, we have access to material from all the different… I mean, not all, but most historical periods and places and cultures all around the world. So we can kind of artificially time-travel, like we can kind of reconstruct, I don't know, the atmosphere of a certain place in the 70s, very easily, because we have access to movies, we have access to music, fashion. And in fact, young people are doing that a lot. They sometimes kind of romanticize a point in time in history. They would like to relive that moment, and they use the internet to research very profoundly about that historical period and recreating the atmosphere, the vibe of that point in time. So there's this idea, also, that time is like a line that we can travel - maybe not with our body and not properly, not proper time-travel - but maybe with our mind. We can explore vibes and times and, in fact, another giant - I mean, that will open a big chapter, but I would just mention it - another important keyword in internet aesthetics, all internet aesthetics, starting from vaporwave, is nostalgia. Like people are indulging in nostalgic sentiment all the time. And we see this weird thing happening, of very young people being nostalgic for things they never experienced. So nostalgia is becoming like a generic sentiment, right? It's not really about being nostalgic about your past. It's about being nostalgic in general. So nostalgia is kind of this... I don't know, propellant that you can use to go elsewhere with your mind. It's about imagination more than memory.

There's another question here. A lot of notes. I can see a lot of notes. That's really a lot of notes. Specs.

Yeah. I've had the therapy, I've stopped writing notes [laughs]. The first thing that I was really…

Do you want to speak on the mic for our global audience?

Yes, stick me on the mic. The first thing that really occupied my mind was the thought of the metaphors that you're talking about - corridors, doors, doors partially open, people exiting reality - and lived experience as a parent and collective of parents about what's actually happening now with teenagers not attending school, struggling to socialize, self-harming. It's widespread, like I'd say endemic rather than pandemic. But that's not the question, okay? So my question is, and I think I'm heading towards trying to create something positive...

Mhm, yeah.

...from what we're observing. How does Donna Haraway's autopoiesis fit within this liminal space, the backroom space, so that autopoiesis being the sort of collective-making, about community, the community of compost, which is partially self-sacrificial, with a clear vision of a future and a way of making future. So the antithesis of what you were describing, that weighs heavy...

Yeah, I get it. I think that it's obviously connected, but in this aesthetics, I feel like this sentiment and also the act of myth-making, it's not entirely conscious as a process and maybe that changes. It's not about wanting to create change. It's more about elaborating a tactic to survive, to communicate, like creating your own world. It's about world-making. But I wouldn't say that it's like a conscious attempt, right? I would say that these aesthetics are more like a spontaneous way that people are finding to express themselves, to connect with each other, to kind of communicate these vibes, to feel related. But maybe this is the difference. It's not entirely conscious as a kind of, yeah…

[Inaudible]

The myth-making in general, the backrooms also in particular. Like initially the myth of the back-room, it started just as a joke.

[Inaudible whispering]

It was just… sometimes it's associated with a thing that is called creepypasta online. Now, creepypastas are just stories that you can find online, like urban legends, internet urban legends, that kind of thing. They are related to horror, they are mostly horror stories, and they're called pasta because it comes from copy-paste, because people tend to copy-paste these stories, but then they make little variation[s]. And so it becomes a mythology in that sense. You don't have just one story, you have one story and all the variations, like in folklore in general. Like mythology in all folklore is not just one story. We have versions of them.

[Inaudible at length]

Yeah, yeah, yes, yeah. It's a lot of things together. It's that, but it's also just a game in the serious sense of the word, and there's something also interesting about internet culture is the fact that games and rituals sometimes are the same thing. And I don't think it's the first time that we see that in history. Like, I think that young generation sometimes they use games as rituals, to connect together and also to imagine possible worlds. It's not always a very conscious process of saying, "I want to build a future, I want to change things." But I think that unconsciously it's a way of trying... like a wheel of... I don't know... wanting to, yeah, leave their mark in a way, or just communicate with their peers in a...

Do we have any other question? There is time for one more question. Yes, I knew there was.

Thank you for this inspiring talk. While listening to you, I was thinking, oh my god, like you have been doing this for so long, right? Since the 90s. And now here we are at 2025 speaking about this. I'm thinking, do you have the feel about blockchain arts? I don't want to say just NFTs, but also NFTs. I have been involved with an exhibition, a group of NFT artists two years ago. And there's so much interesting work that they can do using the blockchain technology, not only just the digital image of the money, you know, like, there's so many things.

Yes. [Laughs]

Do you have any research going on about that? It's... I don't know, the whole like... listening to you, basically, I have been listening, but also in my mind I started this blockchain art history thinking already. Do you have any studies about that?

If I studied blockchain?

Yeah. Did you have any research?

Yeah, I mean, it's not really my focus. Of course I've been researching a little bit about it, because since I study [the] relationship between art and technology, for a couple of years every interview and every social situation, people were asking me about NFTs, so I kind of had to get into it. I think that the blockchain as a technology has immense potentialities, but unfortunately, we tend to build a lot of hype around certain technologies. And now, for example, we have this giant wave or hype around AI. And when the hype is very high, it tends to obscure the real potentialities of the technologies. We want to apply that technology to everything. So it just becomes a buzzword. And that happened with blockchain, unfortunately. So we were victims, I think, of a lot of marketing and hype and a lot of scams, unfortunately, but I think that the blockchain technology has potentialities that we can still kind of apply. For artists in particular, it's just a way of monetizing like their work, which is nothing bad. There's nothing bad about it, but it's... and there are just just a few artists that are also experimenting with the technology. Not just making an image or a sound and just selling it, but just trying to kind of work with the blockchain technology. But very, very few.

[Crosstalk]

There's an interesting book written by a friend of mine about that. It's called Surfing with Satoshi, it has been written by Domenico Quaranta, and it's about blockchain and art.^[5]

Okay I'm gonna look that up. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

And then Rom from UKRAiNATV, Stream Art Europeans, Europe Stream Art Network. I've just Googled the keywords!

Yeah it's their transition from European Stream Art Network to just the Stream Art Network. Yeah, that we try to do. Accelerate.

[Inaudible] ...didn't survive...

Europe is still in the background, but there is something more than Europe. There is the future. That's what I would ask about, I would like to keep this direction maybe, because there was something about nostalgia. There was something about the beginning, some archeology of the internet, this liminal space. There was nothing about the hybridity that we love to use in this similar context, I think, working with this multi-interconnection situation that we are actually with, yeah? So I would like to maybe ask you about some reflection about the current, and the future, possibilities for travelling in time. Because for sure we have two chapters, two big chapters: the web 1, which was the moment of time and space for some illusions and some utopians that will connect, that we will be free, that is decentralized and so on, that we can connect cables and connect people together. And then we found ourselves stuck in a platform internet, the web 2, that we are just consumers, yeah? We have apps, we have mobiles, we are still online, but there is kind of the gap between ourselves... and this is what we try to do in the stream art, and also in these kind of meetings, yeah? That we can invert the cameras, we can find that aspect, that set of... that we are like an interconnect, yeah? Here you watch your social media. You can do the story. You can stream it. You can do your own streaming from this stream event, yeah, in the same time. Also, we are interconnect together with [key?] now and so on. And is it a future also for that kind of decentralized dreams from the past? Also, I found, a few years ago, NFT not only as a kind of field for some technological experimentation, but also institutional experimentation, that it's like a new form of collecting. It's of course related to this digital accelerate rightwing, concentrate capital and ownership, way of thinking. But maybe there is also like something inspiring to grab, to deal with in a subversive way. This is kind of the comment, and this is kind of a set of questions or possible direction to go out from the…

The hope for the future, right? I would say that's our hope for the future. And, as I said, I see that something is moving, and we need to all keep pushing towards it, and especially... I mean, this may sound banal, but education is key. Like, what we need to do is talk to people directly and try to kind of do what Jodi did back in the 90s, to deconstruct, open the interface, open the box, and show to people what technology really is, so that they can make up their mind about it. And also maybe have the courage to get their hands on technology, because that's also what you do, right? Like this idea is not to just accept the tool as it is, but have the courage to mess with it, also in the wrong way, or with what you have, like in a very liberating way. So my hope for the future is that we can transmit to the newer generations this attitude to technology, that it's a more hands-on kind of attitude that we lost, as you said, over the years. Yeah.

Thanks so much. I think we're going to draw to a close now. That was such an amazing session.

Thank you.

Both books recently translated into English, just last year. I think are easily Googleable if you want to get hold of one.

Yes, yes, you just Google my name, you find both [laughs].

And really look forward to the next book, or your next project. I don't know whether you can make any final comments about what you're working on at the moment.

Yeah, I recently wrote a short essay about artificial intelligence and art, and specifically about how artists are conversing with machines. It's about the dialogue with machines, not really about AI art as a product. It's a reflection about how artists enter in a dialogue with the machine to produce something, right? So it's about the relationship between the human and computer. That book will come out in Italian in a couple of months. I don't know about future translations. And now I'm working on a new project, but that I can't really talk about that much.

[Laughs]

But it's related to what Rom was saying. It's about the possibility of reclaiming technology in a way.

Okay. Thanks so much. And if I could just invite everybody to thank Valentina for her time and insights.

[Applause]

Thank you. Thank you for coming and inviting me. Thank you.

And in case you are around and sharing the same architectural space with us in the Midlands, tomorrow from 1pm to 2pm at Warwick Faculty of Arts Building, Valentina will talk a little more about conversations between art and technology, between the artist and the machine. The seminar will be recorded, so it will be available online, and also Valentina will be our guest at the podcast Media Whatever. So, yes, so see you soon, actually. Stay tuned, as they say.

[Laughs]

As the pro would say, subscribe. No-

Like and subscribe.

Like and subscribe. Yeah, okay, goodnight.

Thank you.

[Applause]

Cheers.