Gallery Entry

Automation... is the future

By Janina Maulhardt & Tobias Kauer · AT

When machines complete our actions, they start to shape our thinking. Recommendations become decisions, predictions become intentions. What we gain in convenience, we give up in agency. This project explores the gap between comfort and control. While the promise of increased automation lies in greater convenience, the price we pay is a gradual loss of active control. As convenience grows, we steadily hand over our own agency to algorithms, blurring the line between simple assistance and dependence. We modified an electronic typewriter to make this tension tangible by equipping it with an invasive AI-powered autocomplete system. Every hesitation is treated as inefficiency. The moment the writer pauses, the algorithm takes over and the sentence is completed without the writer’s consent. Without a delete key, every unwanted word is permanently pressed onto the paper, leaving behind a physical record of the moment control shifted from human to machine. This project was created by Janina Maulhard and Tobias Kauer

Category

CONCEPTS MIXED MEDIA

Approved

14 October 2026