This publication came out of the artistic research project “Dialogues With Machines”. Joost Rekveld, experimental filmmaker and media artist based in Brussels, personally experienced such a dialogue while making the experimental film “Mechanisms Common to Disparate Phenomena; #59”. Historical analogue computing and simulation techniques were re-enacted, old electronic machines were sought out and cared for, and new devices were developed, based on principles that have long fallen out of use. During this process the dialogue changed, the notion of learning from machines changed, and Rekveld’s views on technology, mathematics, and media archaeology were also transformed as a result. This led to a perspective on the relation between humans and machines that is not predicated on control.

“Our technical milieu is a collective product, a long-term external memory to which each generation contributes. We cannot act or think without it, and the design and development of our technology is therefore a form of politics that shapes our life-world, our planet and ourselves.
During this project, media archaeology became an approach to investigating this collective construction. Conversely, it led to an understanding of films, installations, talks, and writings as small gestures that may contribute to shaping it.” (J.R.)

About Rekveld

Joost Rekvelds films have been shown world-wide since the 1990s, and he had retrospectives at the Rotterdam Film Festival, the Barbican in London and the Ann Arbor Film Festival among others. He has been teaching in various capacities on the intersection between interdisciplinary arts and the exact sciences. Since 2017 he has been affiliated to KASK & Conservatorium in Ghent as an artistic researcher.

Paperback, published in 2025, 176 pages, 16.8 x 22 x 1.5 cm.