Machines, AI and the past//future of things

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Köpferl, Karola, Kurze, Albrecht
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
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author Köpferl, Karola
Kurze, Albrecht
author_facet Köpferl, Karola
Kurze, Albrecht
contents This essay explores a techno-artistic experiment that reanimates a 1980s East German typewriter using a contemporary AI language model. Situated at the intersection of media archaeology and speculative design, the project questions dominant narratives of progress by embedding generative AI in an obsolete, tactile interface. Through public exhibitions and aesthetic intervention, we demonstrate how slowness, friction, and material render artificial intelligence not only visible but open to critical inquiry. Drawing on concepts such as zombie media, technostalgia, and speculative design, we argue that reappropriating outdated technologies enables new forms of critical engagement. Erika - the AI-enabled typewriter - functions as both interface and interruption, making space for reflection, irony, and cultural memory. In a moment of accelerated digital abstraction, projects like this foreground the value of deliberate slowness, experiential materiality, and historical depth. We conclude by advocating for a historicist design sensibility that challenges presentism and reorients human-machine interaction toward alternative, perceived futures.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_16285
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Machines, AI and the past//future of things
Köpferl, Karola
Kurze, Albrecht
Human-Computer Interaction
This essay explores a techno-artistic experiment that reanimates a 1980s East German typewriter using a contemporary AI language model. Situated at the intersection of media archaeology and speculative design, the project questions dominant narratives of progress by embedding generative AI in an obsolete, tactile interface. Through public exhibitions and aesthetic intervention, we demonstrate how slowness, friction, and material render artificial intelligence not only visible but open to critical inquiry. Drawing on concepts such as zombie media, technostalgia, and speculative design, we argue that reappropriating outdated technologies enables new forms of critical engagement. Erika - the AI-enabled typewriter - functions as both interface and interruption, making space for reflection, irony, and cultural memory. In a moment of accelerated digital abstraction, projects like this foreground the value of deliberate slowness, experiential materiality, and historical depth. We conclude by advocating for a historicist design sensibility that challenges presentism and reorients human-machine interaction toward alternative, perceived futures.
title Machines, AI and the past//future of things
topic Human-Computer Interaction
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.16285