The Black Box Myth
If you missed it, my piece in Tech Policy Press tackles the relationship the AI industry has with uncertainty: using what they don't know about AI as evidence that they're right, or that it should be feared, or that it can't be properly regulated.
The "Black Box" myth is often used to convince us that the model is "deciding" things through mysterious logics or reasoning – when the "black box" refers specifically to the cascading effects of flipping numbers in a neural net. We know why they write the text they do: it's the data. We just don't know what the precise mechanism is. While that's valid for research, the industry smudges the mystery into self-mythology.
Eryk Salvaggio
Upcoming In-Person Events,
June & July :: Rome & Melbourne
Rome, 26 June: Is AI Art Net Art?
w/ Vladan Joler & Valentina Tanni
@ Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome
Gen AI’s images are a distillation of the internet, inheriting the text categories assigned to images alongside the images themselves. How do artists work with, or resist, these competing systems of powers, logics, and communication?
In this exploratory discussion, Vladan Joler, Valentina Tanni and Eryk Salvaggio will examine how AI has changed the way we imagine and frame these systems today. We look to Internet Art, a movement anchored in critique and resistance, to find paths relevant to critical artistic engagement with AI and uncover what has been elided from the movement from net.art to AI art. Free & open to the public!
Melbourne, July 3: Human Movie (Performance!)
w/ JODI (NL, BE) & Debris Facility Pty Ltd (AUS)
@ Club Miscellania, Melbourne
I'll perform Human Movie as part of a series of performances including the net.art legends JODI and the Australian "para-corporate and parasitic entity," Debris Facility Pty Ltd. Open to the public, details below!
Melbourne, 7-8 July: Noisy Joints: Embodying the AI Glitch
w/ Camila Galaz
@ RMIT Media Portal, Deakin Downtown, Melbourne
The entire conference is going to be great. Here's our part:
Artists and researchers Eryk Salvaggio and Camila Galaz present a participatory workshop on interrupting and reframing the outputs of generative AI systems. Drawing from a critical AI puppetry workshop originally developed at the Mercury Store in Brooklyn, New York, Noisy Joints invites participants to think through the body—its categorisation, misrecognition, and noise—within AI image-generation systems. How do our physical movements interact with machine perception? How can choreographies of shadow, gesture, and failure unsettle the logic of automated categorisation?
Across the session, participants will explore these questions through short talks, collaborative video-making, glitch-puppetry exercises, and experimental use of tools like Runway’s GEN3 model. Using shadows, projections, and improvised movement, the workshop will trace a playful and critical path through the interfaces and assumptions that shape AI perception. No technical experience is required.
Convened by Joel Stern (RMIT), Thao Phan (ANU), and Christopher O’Neill (Deakin).
