Extract from my 2025 essay, In the Substrate:
I find it revealing, if not moving, that Alan Turing’s 1950 seminal essay Computing Machinery and Intelligence was published in Mind: A Quarterly Review of Philosophy rather than in a science or mathematics journal. The learning machine, as he describes it, is not simply a servant but a pupil. As those involved in teaching know, education should never be an extractivist or merely transactional project. Instead, it must be generatively nurturing. Turing’s questions about the development of a learning machine concern philosophy as much as ethics and pedagogy. As we abandon AI to corporate interests that propel consumption and capitalism forward at an alarming rate, I believe there is a message in his choice, which is well worth mulling over as we churn together in the compost of our present, creating either toxins or sustenance for the future.
More on Decentralized Action in Art from Baltan Laboratories:
In recent years, there has been a surge in the use of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), for instance, to economically exploit the digital art market. At the same time, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a tool for facilitating everyday tasks and providing services. The complex nature of these technologies and their entanglement with the global creative sector, economics, politics and natural resources has created an urgency to explore the role that these technologies have played in society to date and how they could be used to enable a more sustainable and equitable future.
The ARTeCHÓ publication brings together artists and researchers who have delved deep into the complexities and nuances of AI and decentralised technologies, as well as the new realities they invite. The book invites the reader to ground oneself where the hope of a more sustainable future brought by decentralization and the colonial and extractive legacies of technological progress collide. Decentralization implies a move away from centralized control to a web of smaller control centres, each contributing to a larger whole. But do we instantly speak about decentralized power when speaking about decentralized technology? Can AI not simply be trained but also educated? And can its further development be reconciled with the limited capacity of global power grids?
The essays and conversations contained in this book suggest ideas and raise questions that could serve as a guide for the development of a new economic thinking that looks beyond anthropocentric and extractive logic of the modern capitalist economy or that could expand the digital space for an autonomous knowledge commons. The publication ends with a catalogue of artworks produced by ARTeCHÓ fellows, which gives examples in which, despite all the uncertainties and unanswered questions, they have put their ideas into practice and enacted a decentralized reality.
Book credits
A book by Baltan Laboratories
Editors: Lorenzo Gerbi; Marlou van der Cruijsen & Julia Kassyk
Contributors: Lorenzo Gerbi; Marlou Van Der Cuijsen; Ruth Catlow; Eva Jäger; Marina Otero Verzier; Renée Turner
Artists: Azahara Cerezo; Carlos Monleón Gendall; César Escudero Andaluz; Cristóbal Ascencio Ramos; dmstfctn; Egór Kraft; Fanny Zaman; Hrvoje Hiršl; Ianis Dobrev; OPN Studio; Merlina Rañi; Michele Bazzoli; Paula Nishijima; Peter Kærgaard Andersen; Silvia Binda Heiserova
Proofreader: Steven Corcoran
Visual Identity and Book Design: CRSL.STUDIO
Printing: Navapress.com
Distribution: Lecturis; Idea Books
ARTeCHÓ Partners: Baltan Laboratories; Meet; Zaragoza City of Knowledge Foundation; The Frankfurt School Blockchain Center; SERN
About ARTeCHÓ
A European initiative, ARTeCHÓ was created by five institutions: SERN — Startup Europe Regions Network (Belgium), Baltan Laboratories (Netherlands), the FZC-Etopia Center for Art & Technology (Spain), the Frankfurt School Blockchain Center (Germany), and MEET Digital Cultural Center (Italy). It was funded by the European Commission.
ARTeCHÓ was designed to build a peer-learning community in which artists could explore the intersections of art, Crypto Art, blockchains and NFTs. Participating artists were provided with the technical resources and mentorship required to support their artistic and professional growth, with a view to promoting new business models, copyright protection and public engagement with the digital arts. Through decentralized technologies, they explored social, environmental and economic themes, examining issues such as digital scarcity, resource distribution and ecosystem balance.