Martyna Marciniak is the new Artist-in-Residence at Ars Electronica

• More about European Digital Deal
• Afterfact by Martyna Marciniak & All 12 residencies
• Press release as PDF

(Linz, April 18, 2024) Following an Open Call that received close to 800 applications, the Creative Europe co-funded project, European Digital Deal kicked off twelve artist residencies in eleven countries in Europe this month. For its 9-month residency part of European Digital Deal, Ars Electronica selected Martyna Marciniak with the project Afterfact to receive a €25.000 grant and access to a mentoring programme with a group of experts from the Ars Electronica network. 

During the residency at Ars Electronica in Linz/Austria, Marciniak will expand the original question “What’s new/s?”, giving it a compelling direction. The outcome will then be shown as part of the Ars Electronica Festival 2025.

Video Installation & Digital Attention Toolkit

Afterfact sets out to expose the mechanisms behind visual evidencing and misinformation by looking into the individual and collective sense-making that takes place in the face of controversial statement made with images. Through reframing disinformation issues, the project wants to empower audiences to develop visual literacy, train their ability to notice, perceive and make sense, and trace networks of disinformation.

A video installation that investigates different cases of misinformation (connecting recent ‘AI events’ to other known cases of misinformation) to uncover ‘digital aesthetics of fact’ will be accompanied by a digital attention toolkit that confronts users with the crisis of truth aesthetics by allowing them to interact with the evidence. The two components harness the research into eye tracking technologies, digital attention extraction, and traditions and practices of noticing, to instruct and speculate on how we can regain ownership of our digital attention.

About the Artist

Martyna Marciniak is a Polish, Berlin-based artist and researcher. Her work explores spatial storytelling, speculative fictions, and 3D reconstruction to investigate cases of systemic violence and human rights abuses and question the role of technology in perpetuating or undoing existing biases and misconceptions. She has worked with media outlets including CNN and BBC, as well as NGO’s including Forensic Architecture, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch. The research group Border Emergency Collective, which she co-established, investigated and documented stories of migrating people at the Polish-Belarusian border. Her artworks were exhibited at the Warsaw Biennale, Kinema Icon in Bucharest, Haus Gropius in Dessau, and deTour Festival in Hong Kong, among others.

About European Digital Deal

A three-year (January 2023 to December 2025) investigation into how the accelerated, but at times unconsidered, adoption of new technologies affects democratic processes, European Digital Deal is run by a consortium coordinated by Ars Electronica (AT) and made up of the Center for the Promotion of Science (RS), Culture Yard (DK), Gluon (BE), Teatro Circo de Braga (PT), iMAL (BE), Kersnikova (SI), LABoral (ES), Onassis Stegi (GR), Pro Progressione (HU), Sineglossa (IT), Waag Futurelab (NL) and Zaragoza City of Knowledge Foundation (ES).

One of the main pillars of European Digital Deal are the twelve artist residencies that recently started and that will explore three aspects of the ungoverned and seemingly ungovernable techno sphere: the changes to the media landscape and public administration, and the need for ethical, fair, and sustainable innovation practices.

All project descriptions of the artists in residence are available here.

This project has been co-funded by the European Union’s Creative Europe programme under grant agreement No 101100036. Views and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) can be held responsible for them. This project was also co-funded by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, the Civil Service and Sport.