The fifth edition of the PublicSpaces Conference took place on Friday 13 June, in Amsterdam. Continuing the conference’s tradition, the programme for 2025 included artistic activities, installations and performances. This year arts were called to react to the theme "Shaping our Digital Future” with artworks that "explore big tech challenges and visualize solutions for the future".
One such artwork was the immersive lecture “Off the Record” by Nirit Peled, presented under the conference theme "the AI we Need".
"(This Conversetion is) Off the Record" features a journalist, a police officer, a human rights lawyer and 125 boys, who were singled out by the algorithm. The artist created this project after a decade-long study on how risk-assessment tools were used by the Dutch police to predict which young persons will become criminals. The artwork explores the links between our emotional and digital reality and merges fiction, documentary, live performance and 3D design (image 1). It highlights that once a person is targeted there is no one accountable to turn to.
Other artistic works of the Conference included the talk show Data Morgana by AT5, OBA, Studio Julia Janssen and Display Europe, the Mesh Network Performance by the artist collective Radical Data, the mobile workshop Smartest Doorbell and the installation Digital Flower Towers by the DIRT - DIRT – Dutch Institute of Royal Taste. There were also artistic works in the digital form including the open source smart doorbell Concerned Neighbours by Roos Groothuizen and Dave Borghuis and the CODE Fortune Cookies by IMPAKT.
The European Cultural Foundation was one of the main supporters of the event. CCS’ perspectives were also voiced in speeches by individual artists and organisations including Europeana, the European University Institute), the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) Culture & Creativity, the Community Media Forum Europe (CMFE) and the Center for Sustainable Media.
The conference was organised by PublicSpaces and Waag Futurelab. Other themes of the conference included: Digital Autonomy, Sustainable World, the Future of Social Media, Media and Citizenship.
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