Deep Unlearning (I), 2018
Custom card game, 4K video

Deep Unlearning (I) began with a custom card game developed with Sascha Pohflepp. Shuffling the cards generated unexpected combinations of algorithmic instructions. Workshop participants and friends contributed algorithms that informed the project, bringing different approaches to knowledge and computation into its development.

The game drew on the tradition of instruction pieces associated with Fluxus. Nonsensical combinations were an intended part of the work, creating occasions when familiar ways of reading and interpreting an instruction might no longer be sufficient. This uncertainty formed the basis of ‘deep unlearning’: a playful attempt to loosen established habits of thought and approach unfamiliar ways of knowing.

Developed in the context of learning machines and emerging forms of nonhuman creativity, the project asked how people might encounter intelligence that does not share their assumptions. Games offered a common setting for that inquiry. Through the simple act of shuffling, the work proposed an exercise in accepting partial understanding and considering how meaning might emerge at the limits of human comprehension.

Research interests
More-than-human

Exhibition
The Influencing Machine, nGbK, Berlin
1 December 2018–20 January 2019
Exhibition curation: Cornelia Wagner

Project credits

In collaboration with Sascha Pohflepp

Curated by Nora O' Murchú as part of the Schloss Post Residency at Akademie Solitude.

Thanks to our workshop participants and friends who sent us inspiring algorithms: Burak Arikan, Sankalp Bhatnagar, Lars Büsing, Taeyoon Choi, Alexis Convento, Sam Hart, Melanie Hoff, Pam Liou, Geoff Manaugh, Mike Mozer, Yuka Murakami, Philipp Schmitt, Karolina Sobecka, Julie Solovyeva, Phil Stearns

Project website: deepunlearning.schloss-post.com