Artificial Instructions

Artificial Instructions is an interactive installation that stages a game of algorithmic disobedience. Its name refers to the Instructors: objects that work as automata and interfaces, running software that is partly AI-based. They invite visitors to play and hand out commands printed on receipts. Each command asks the player to break with habit - to stand somewhere, move an object, address strangers or claim a space - and each completed task unlocks a harder one.

The loop is simple and public. A player receives an instruction, carries it out, returns and reports how it went, then levels up. Because the tasks are generated and sequenced by a learning system, the installation produces its own escalating script. The commands do not smooth the visitor’s path but deliberately generate friction: a break in cognitive routines and social norms. The programme’s stated aim is to appropriate the exhibition space through the actions of the people who use it.

The work takes direction from the conditions it parodies. Surveillance capitalism tracks movement, prediction models anticipate decisions, and recommendation systems curate attention; the digital sphere runs on invisible rules. Artificial Instructions turns those logics against themselves, using the machine to issue small acts of refusal rather than seamless service. It treats the exhibition as a social laboratory, where individual acts of overcoming can gather into unpredictable collective irritation.

Artificial Instructions was developed by Louis Voelkel, Meredith Thomas and Nils Jaeger. It was shown at re:publica 26 in Berlin (18-20 May 2026) as an installation in the Art & Culture track, inviting participants to move from a digital pinprick to collective disruption.