System Vulnerability

In this episode, Hannah talks to German media artist Simon Weckert about the societal impacts of digitalisation and his artistic strategies to disrupt, redirect, or reduce the logic of systems to absurdity. His work points to the vulnerability of allegedly infallible digital systems and the risks of relying on them.

Art Is Not a Thing is produced by Ars Electronica and developed in collaboration with Radio Ö1.

Host: Hannah Balber
Producers: Ana-Maria Carabelea, Christopher Sonnleitner, Marlene Grinner
Editing: Hannah Balber, Ana-Maria Carabelea
Music: Karl Julian Schmidinger

Ars Electronica:
https://ars.electronica.art/
https://www.instagram.com/arselectronica/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/arselectronica

Simon Weckert

Transcript

Simon Weckert: Many people assume that technology is inherently safe; that systems work as they should and can be trusted. But that is an illusion. No digital system is ever fully secure. Every system has vulnerabilities. 

Part of my work is to point out these blind spots and to show how dependent we are on digital infrastructures and also what it means when these systems are attacked or repurposed. They can quickly be turned against us. 

Ana-Maria Carabelea: Welcome to Art Is Not a Thing, the podcast series about art as a practice of critical inquiry, knowledge production and world-building. My name is Ana Carabelea, and together with my colleague Hannah Balber, we discuss with artists and researchers whose work questions and reimagines our practices in and of the world. What does it mean to be human in the age of data, algorithms, and digital control? And how can we escape the omnipresent surveillance? In this episode, Hannah talks to German media artist Simon Weckert. In his installations and performances, he critically examines the societal impacts of digitalisation and develops artistic strategies to disrupt, redirect, or reduce the logic of systems to absurdity. It's about hacking as a creative practice and an act of resistance - as well as questioning the infallibility of digital systems. Enjoy the conversation. 

Hannah Balber: This year, you presented several works that deal with technologies tracking, sorting, and categorizing us on a daily basis, such as Blue Noise, Digital Camouflage, and Null Island ID. What was your focus in 2025? What are these new works about? 

Simon: 2025 was a year shaped by hacking projects. They all grew out of something I started two years ago called The Republic of Null Island. The idea came from a question: in the digital sphere, is there a place where all misdirected or faulty data ends up? By coincidence, I discovered that a huge amount of data is tagged with the GPS coordinates 0.0. Data from platforms such as Instagram and Airbnb, and at some point, Covid cases were all localized there. It happens whenever your phone can’t determine your exact position. Instead of leaving it blank, the system simply tags it with 0.0. 

From there, I started expanding the metaphor: if so much data ends up in this strange digital nowhere, couldn’t we imagine it as an island, a society, a kind of ecology? I explored this through performances and installations. And at some point, I realized: this is a place of errors. And to get there, you need to create a digital error. That’s where Blue Noise came in. In this work, I generate glitches in the Bluetooth spectrum, the one we use for wireless headphones, voice assistants, listening to podcasts or whatever, so data is rerouted to this fictional island.  

Hannah: Blue Noise interferes with Bluetooth signals. Why disrupt them? 

Simon: I noticed how many people in public spaces, in the subway, on the streets, isolate themselves with wireless headphones, cutting off the outside world. I wanted to highlight that disconnection by literally interrupting it with Blue Noise. 

Hannah: So, it’s a small device that actually prevents people from connecting to their Bluetooth devices? 

Simon: Exactly. I tested it in the subway: it works within about 20 meters. You can cut off someone’s headphones on the opposite platform. It can even go further: you could eavesdrop or inject your own sounds. Looking ahead, this piece is also a reminder that we will probably rely more and more on AI assistants – devices we talk to and interact with. It shows how vulnerable we are when these systems connect via Bluetooth, and how easily that trust can be exploited if we rely on them too much. 

Hannah: Your work Digital Camouflage also deals with hacking and disruption. Here you designed a piece of clothing that confuses AI systems. How does it work, and what interests you about it? 

Simon: I realized that more and more surveillance systems are used in public spaces, for example, at Berlin Südkreuz station. With Digital Camouflage I wanted to offer a way to move more freely. The shirt is designed to trick computer vision: it screams “look here, this is important,” but once the algorithm focuses, it finds nothing it can recognize. In installations, I often show it with a digital mirror: the AI detects me immediately, but once I put on the shirt, I vanish. I’m no longer registered as a person. 

Hannah: So usually, the camera marks people with a green box. But when someone wears this bright, colorful shirt, they become invisible. What fascinates you about this idea of textile invisibility? 

Simon: For me, it’s about how these technologies shape our behavior. The more surveillance surrounds us, the more we adapt and lose freedoms. Digital Camouflage is about pushing back, showing that with actually quite simple tricks, we can reclaim a bit of that freedom. 

Hannah: How did you get into art, and where did technology come into play? 

Simon: My grandmother was a programmer in the GDR, working with punch cards on big computers. From her, I learned a lot about computer architecture. I went on to study computer science, but realized I didn’t want to write algorithms for stock markets or products. I wanted to use technology creatively. I experimented in subcultures, doing live visuals in clubs, and later understood how deeply digital technologies shape society. That’s when I decided to use art to tell stories about them. And I think it's really important to use the technologies we rely on every day to spin narratives about how they shape our society and what that does to us. Eventually, I studied at the Berlin University of the Arts, in a class that focused precisely on programming and digital tools in art. 

Hannah: You’re also part of the Chaos Computer Club, where hackers come together. What role does artistic hacking play for you? What fascinates you about disrupting and rerouting existing systems? 

Simon: I think that, as an artist, I have many more possibilities to tell stories and to find forms than, say, a purely scientific paper or just the hack itself. Hacking, in its core sense, doesn’t even have to involve technology. At first, it simply means using things in ways they weren’t originally intended — whether that’s adding an extra fifth leg to an Ikea chair, experimenting with food, or doing social engineering. The underlying idea is: I don’t just accept the world as it is presented to me, I try to reshape it, to appropriate the tools and bend them to my own purposes. 

The second layer of hacking is about security. Many people assume that technology is inherently safe, that systems work as they should and can be trusted. But that’s an illusion. No digital system is ever fully secure — every system has vulnerabilities. Part of my work is to point out these blind spots and to show how dependent we are on digital infrastructures. And also what it means when these systems are attacked or repurposed: they can quickly be turned against us. 

Ana: Simon Weckert describes himself as a "modern-day digital wizard and mischievous tinkerer." He teaches at the University of Arts in Linz and the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. His playground is the digital world, where code and circuits aren’t just tools but ironic statements. It's not about the practical value of technology, but about what future generations will make of our button-pressing, app-refreshing selves. His creations are part tech, part art, and part social critique, aiming to unravel complex issues in a way that makes people laugh or think. His works include the installation Zapfenstreich: a self-playing trumpet in front of the Google headquarters in Zurich, as a warning against autonomous weapons systems. In the interactive performance Airmarket, he exchanged clean air for personal data. For his work Google Maps Hacks, he received an Award of Distinction at the Prix Ars Electronica in 2020. 

Hannah: Your best-known work is probably the performance Google Maps Hacks from 2020. With 99 smartphones in a handcart, you created a virtual traffic jam in Berlin. What was the idea behind this piece, and how did it start? 

Simon: The starting point was actually a May Day demonstration in Berlin. I noticed that while people were protesting in the streets, Google Maps suddenly showed heavy traffic in the city center, even though there were no cars at all. That’s when I realized: Google doesn’t generate its traffic data from vehicle movement, but from the GPS positions of smartphones. Which means, if I had a bunch of phones, I could create such a jam myself. 

Around the same time, Google had announced plans to open its first headquarters in Berlin. There were protests against it, and in response Google said they would not move into Kreuzberg as planned. Instead, they quietly opened headquarters in Berlin Mitte in early 2020, without much public attention. And then I had an idea. With 99 phones I could create a virtual jam and literally draw a red line on the map. So I thought: How about I map the mapmakers on their own map in the form of a red line? And that was part of the performance: I drew a virtual traffic jam, so to speak, a red line around the Google Maps headquarters on Google Maps. 

Hannah: You also raise another issue: when a protest is shown as traffic on Google Maps, what does it mean if drivers are automatically diverted?  

Simon: Exactly. That became clear to me during the process. Protesting means taking to the streets to confront people with your issues. It’s a democratic tool to make yourself visible. But if Google automatically turns a protest into a traffic jam and reroutes people around it, then those passersby never encounter the protest. They don’t even know why they’re being redirected. In a way, that undermines the democratic function of protest. So, I think mapping tools need to be adapted. For example, if a protest is officially registered, it should also be marked on the map. Otherwise you could argue that this democratic practice is robbed of its impact. 

Hannah: In your work, you explore how maps don’t just represent but also shape the world. Let’s return to this place — or rather non-place — you’ve worked on: Null Island. In 2024 you presented the installation The Republic of Null Island. What interests you about it, and how do you approach it artistically? 

Simon: The project began with the question: is there such a thing as a digital landfill, a place where misdirected data ends up? Null Island is such a site. It’s the GPS point 0°0°, in the middle of the Atlantic, hundreds of kilometers from any coast. There’s nothing there, apart from one oceanographic buoy. 

What happens is this: say you’re renting out a flat on Airbnb and you enter an address that doesn’t quite exist, maybe a typo or a wrong house number. Instead of flagging it as an error, Airbnb defaults to 0°0°. And that happens across many platforms. You can try it yourself: zoom in on Airbnb at 0 0 and you’ll find hundreds of listings floating in the ocean.  

I started wondering whether people might actually travel there simply because of the data they encounter about this place – and how, through these representations, a kind of mental map of Null Island could emerge. And I started asking myself: what does it take for a place like this to become ‘real’ in some sense? How does it get marked on the map? My goal is, in part, to draw more attention to this spot and make people aware of it.  

One idea I had was also to install an internet node at the buoy, so that people could route their connection through Null Island, anonymizing themselves by generating “data noise.” 

For me, this relates to how we resist algorithmic profiling. There are two strategies: either we minimize the data we give away, or we flood the system with so much irrelevant data that it becomes useless. Null Island could be thought of as such a camouflage site in the digital sphere, a place we can “go” in order to move online with greater anonymity. 

Hannah: What motivates you in your artistic practice? What do you want your audience to take away? 

Simon: First of all: critical thinking about technology. Not just using these systems blindly, but questioning how they shape us and how dependent we become. That’s my starting point. The second is empowerment. I also teach, for example, in Linz, and soon in Vienna. I run a course called Machine Unlearning, where students hack AI systems and use technology creatively. For me, that’s essential: showing that we can take control back, reappropriate the tools, and actively shape how we engage with technology. 

Hannah: Wonderful. Thank you very much for the conversation. 

Simon: Thank you.  

Ana: That’s it for today. Thank you so much for tuning in, and hope you enjoyed it! Today’s episode was brought to you by Radio Ö1 and Ars Electronica. Join us next month for a new episode, and in the meantime, follow us or share the show with someone you think might like it.