Nonlinearity is not just a collision of times, but an indifference to time

now you tell me I remind you of a friend, but one that you can't seem to name

“Remember when on the internet no one knew you were a dog?"

Dasha Ilina tricks the search algorithms that might read her essay about algorithmic surveillance into thinking it’s just a recipe for a grilled cheese sandwich.

This mix by Orpheu The Wizard consists of a selection of songs loosely revolving around the themes of Mystics of the Chthulucene. First up in a new mix series, where artists, selectors, and music geeks connect sounds to a broader and recurring artistic research theme that weaves through The Couch.

For the fourth episode of our collaboration with Future Artefacts FM, hosts Nina and Niamh talk with David Blandy. While revisiting his work, they explore the ends of multiple worlds, from family illness, the foundations of a political system shattering and the end of a 17 year old magical gaming world, Asheron’s Call.

"Define your 'perfect future' in positive and using the present tense (ex: not ‘I would like to do’, but ‘I do’). Imagine that you have reached your goal overnight: tomorrow morning, how do you realise that the transformation has taken place?"

For the 3rd episode of our collaboration with Future Artefacts FM, hosts Nina and Niamh talk with Jan Berger, the founder of Mythical Institution, about what magic looks like in game worlds and the limitations of magical tropes and expectations, such as their preference for mediaeval villages, steampunk gadgetry or queer-coded villains.

Are the countless self-proclaimed ‘healers’ giving medical advice on TikTok quacks? Or are they a sign that witches* have reclaimed their space in the health field, reviving lost knowledge and offering the care that mainstream healthcare still fails to provide?

For the second episode of Future Artefacts FM in collaboration with The Couch, hosts Nina and Niamh discuss Bea Xu's work which questions how rituals can guide, mislead or comfort us.

"She just gave me access to terrestrial intelligence. My vagina is the key, I thought."

If the postmodern (digital) experience is a similarly disorienting experience to that of the modern flâneur, then is it possible to adopt the same approach to the web as to the city, where the mind can freely wander and transform? 

"If you look beyond their corporate functionality, these bodies are all going to the Earth to be repaired from damage by a system that never stops."

Cthulhu – H.P. Lovecraft’s science fiction monster – lurks under the surface of the ocean as an elemental deity. We must wonder what lurks beneath the surface of the systems known as AI.

Ginevra Petrozzi makes the case for a complicated relationship between ourselves and the artificial intelligence tools that guide us through our lives. The stories and myths we construct around the technologies we don’t understand can help us navigate the obscure and even violent power of artificial intelligence.