You find them in sneaky algorithms, at tech conferences, in your most secret digital habits, in seducing commercial narratives, and in sloppy renderings. We all have them: technological imaginaries.

Most commonly, a platform (in the widest sense) functions to foreground that which is placed upon it, be it a politician, a lecturer, a book, or the fruits displayed at a market stall. In a digital context, platforms are also “places” for sharing opinions, enabling commercial algorithms and fast-track shopping across a radically uneven worldwide mass of users, while growing amounts of data are extracted, mobilised, or concealed. Yet the platform itself is most often designed to remain invisible. Carefully curated and prepared for a specific purpose, it is designed to induce a certain behaviour, elevating certain content over others and promoting a narrative.

Where the possibility of grasping digital platforms ends, the imagination begins. Woven together by a collection of artistic examples, the presentation demystifies tech imaginaries. Rather than treating the artworks as illustrations of theoretical concepts, it positions them as generators of critical insight, rendering the otherwise invisible assumptions, power relations, and imaginaries of digital platforms perceptible and open to collective reconstruction.

A glance through contemporary artworks, media studies, and feminist science technology studies. Experienced, observed, analysed, and presented via film stills, installation shots, moving image, diagrams, first-person encounters, and occasional interludes.

Softer Digital Futures: Conference 2026