Every year CODE brings together artists and non-artists in a five-month process of inspiration, discussion, collaboration and co-creation. They work together in groups to produce digital art installations, interactive media, performances, immersive experiences and artistic interventions. All the works, each in their own way, address questions that are central to the CODE project: How can we improve the agency we have over our digital lives? How can we become less dependent on Big Tech? How can governments better protect our digital rights, and how can we convey the urgency to act? What steps can we, as concerned citizens, users, researchers and artists, take to support the critical process? This year’s exhibition presents two of the projects, Technosferatu and V.I.B.E. and a workshop Canary in the Coal Mine, produced by the groups that participated in CODE 2025. We will also present the CODE Fortune Cookies.

Technosferatu 
In Technosferatu, viewers are invited to position themselves in a metallic, coffin-shaped vertical seat. A sensor activates a short speculative documentary exploring the political entanglements of ageing, data labour and social media. Technosferatu explores how, in the name of longevity, algorithmic systems transform the body into a site of labour, optimization and exploitation. In escaping death, do we risk becoming the undead – quantified, surveilled and stripped of agency?

V.I.B.E.
In a media landscape characterized by algorithmic bubbles, short-form video content and the resulting collapse of shared reality, reason is under threat from the ‘ambient’ propaganda – or ‘vibe’ – that permeates our environment. Drawing inspiration from the memetic strategies of contemporary far-right movements (such as RemiliaCorp, NRx, 4chan, MAGA), the V.I.B.E. project investigates how hyper-online weaponized aesthetics normalize violence and advance authoritarianism through affectual manipulation.

Canary in the Coal Mine
A game of absurd sensing infrastructures that explores the forced convergence of technological sensing and more-than-human sensory capacities. We invite you to make sense of the world, raise your awareness on techno-ecological entanglements, and reclaim sensible agency in an overstimulated world.

CODE Fortune Cookies
In 1994, Internet pioneer Lou Montulli invented ‘cookies’ for web browser software. The term is derived from the custom of giving restaurant guests fortune cookies containing a hidden message at the end of their meal. CODE’s Fortune Cookies put a twist on this popular tradition by providing special advice, good wishes and future perspectives on digital rights and a society that deals with technology in a fair way.

CODE 2025 is organized by IMPAKT (NL), Werktank (BE), Privacy Salon (BE) and NØ SCHOOL (FR). The participants who worked together for CODE 2025 are based in Belgium and the Netherlands and have a wide variety of nationalities and cultural backgrounds.