NCM partners with RMIT Culture to present a performance night exploring the chaotic descent of the Internet.

Once imagined as a decentralised utopia of free knowledge, DIY culture, and radical sharing, the Internet has now evolved into a dystopia of crypto millionaires, fascist bots, doomscrolling, and algorithmic control. What we imagined as an infrastructure for openness, stability and resilience has left us instead feeling profoundly unstable, polarized, and trapped inside a chaotic walled garden of nothing but noise. In the words of media theorist Wendy Chun, our ground truths have all turned out to be deep fakes.

This program platforms artists that direct us to the broken promises and chaotic realities of the 21st century Internet featuring Signal to Noise artists JODI and Eryk Salvaggio alongside Melbourne artist Debris Facility Pty Ltd.

Performers

JODI (NL, BE)

JODI , groundbreaking Dutch pioneers of net.art , visit Melbourne in July for a series of performances, talks, and workshops, in connection with their work My%Desktop exhibited in Signal to Noise.

Active since 1995, JODI were among the first artists to investigate and subvert the conventions of the Internet, computer programs, and video and computer games. Their work radically disrupts the very language of these systems—visual aesthetics, interface elements, commands, errors, and code—staging extreme digital interventions that destabilise the relationship between computer technology and its users.

JODI’s practice spans installations, software, websites, performances, and exhibitions. Their work is featured in major volumes on digital and media art and has been exhibited internationally at Documenta X, the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), ZKM, ICC, CCA, the Guggenheim, IMAL, Centre Pompidou, Eyebeam, FACT, MoMI, Harvard Art Museums, Rhizome, MoMA and more.

Performance description by JODI:

//video projection +sound ID.ACCO Instagram Infinite%Scroll/ rject instagram.com/ig.oo_o + Live* Scrollage ?? JODI-games/gamemo ? https://maxpaynecheatsonly.net  ?Retro.Digital -Emulation🀫LowBit1982 https://jetsetwilly.jodi.org/ -

Eryk Salvaggio (USA)

Eryk Salvaggio is co-curator of Signal to Noise, a researcher and new media artist interested in the social and cultural impacts of artificial intelligence. His work explores the creative misuse of AI and the transformation of archives into datasets for AI training: a practice designed to expose ideologies of tech and to confront the gaps between datasets and the worlds they claim to represent. A blend of hacker, researcher, designer and artist, he has been published in academic journals, spoken at music and film festivals, and consulted on tech policy at the national level. He can be found at his influential and widely read blog Cybernetic Forests .

At Miscellania, Eryk presents Human Movie: Six Meditations on a Compression Algorithm a 35-minute video essay contrasting computational processes of diffusion models and the human metaphors used to describe them—temperature, creativity, image recognition, memory, reason and the unmodeled. It is a spiritual sequel to the 2023 film Flowers Blooming Backward Into Noise.

Debris Facility

Working as a para-corporate and parasitic entity for a decayed, the Debris Facility Pty Ltd offers a mangled managerial deformance of signoise.

Amplified drag of sic channels of various needles and pins are used against de-produced “records” of plastics, poly-vinyl, tape, acrylic and glue to produce cyclic noise textures. Expanded turntablism is deployed as a frictive surface to gouge, re/decompose through the entropic act of performance. Disposable / Production oscillations: queerosive, quantum contradictions.

Static Images and graphics are animated to further facilitate the rubble of attention, background of overproduction to dislocate the labour of liveliness. Folding and creasing hi/low image processing, psych-headache materials of boredom and time-waste.

Curated by Joel Stern , co-curator of Signal to Noise.

Presented by RMIT Culture and NCM

Supported by ADM+S as part of the project 'Evaluating Automated Cultural Curating and Ranking Systems with Synthetic Data' in association with the School of Media and Communication RMIT and the AusSTS 2025 Conference ‘Signals and Noises ’ running from July 9–11

You may also be interested in these workshops with our friends

Workshop: Noisy Joints: Embodying the AI Glitch Join artists and researchers Eryk Salvaggio (USA) and Camila Galaz (AU) for a participatory workshop focused on interrupting and reframing the outputs of generative AI systems. 7 July, 12pm–2pm Free RMIT Media Portal, Melbourne

Workshop: JODI (jodi.org) Workshop participants are offered the unique opportunity to engage with the groundbreaking artistic practices of net.art pioneers JODI. 7 July, 2pm–4pm Free RMIT Media Portal, Melbourne

Workshop: How to Train Your (Mental) Model Led by Fabian Offert (University of California, Santa Barbara) and Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal (University of Basel), this workshop seeks to critically examine the question of how one may determine if and when artificial intelligence (AI) can be considered “bad,” and who holds the authority to make such determinations. 8 July, 2pm–4pm Free RMIT Media Portal, Melbourne

This performance is located at our partner venue, Miscellania

• Miscellania is not wheelchair accessible
• Miscellania can only be accessed via four flights of stairs
• This program includes limited seating
• All gender toilets are available
• This program includes loud noise and projected moving images. No flashing lights or strobes are allowed at this venue. The interior lighting of the venue is dim and low.
• Patrons are allowed to bring food
• Free entry for First Nations people