Have you ever thought this is all a big psy-op? Do you want to get to the bottom of how much power a handful of Big Tech companies really have over what we see and how we think? Come explore the capture and control of attention, perception, and the planet itself during Symposihmm 📡 Capture & Control at A Lab, , and our livestream on Saturday 24 October, 11.00 to 17.00 CEST.
Our attention, perceptions, even wants are up for grabs. Our lives and ecological resources are turned into data under the auspices of a logic. What does resistance even look like now? And is there still a point to being a user, when the real power over what sticks around is held by the folks behind the curtain?
Back in the early 2000s, Stanford offered a course called 'captology', aka the art and science of making computers persuasive. 20 years later, platforms have become masters of keeping us glued to our screens, and they’re just as skilled at making things disappear into the algorithmic abyss. As artist and researcher Trevor Paglen points out, social media has become the perfect playground for 'influence operations': psychological games intelligence agencies used to run, now outsourced and turbocharged for the digital age.
With our second Symposihmm of the year, Capture & Control, we’ll be exploring the entanglements between processes of physiological and geological capture. How can we make sense of this paranoid era in online platforms? And how are our minds and our planet being captured, rendered, and manipulated? Tune in (physically or digitally) to catch talks by Daniël de Zeeuw, Noura Tafeche and more.
📋 Programme
11.00–12.30
○ Welcome and introduction
○ Talk by Daniël de Zeeuw
○ Talk by Sophie Publig & Mikkel Rørbo
Break, 12.30 –13.15
13.15–15.00
○ Half-Earth Socialism: A Planetary Crisis Game with Francis Tseng
○ 'The Internet is a Horrible Place and I’m Here to Make it Worse': A workshop with Noura Tafeche
○ A third workshop will be announced soon
15.15–17.00
○ with Emilia Tapprest & Søren Siebel
○ Conversation with Marina Otero Verzier
Throughout the day, there will be an exhibition with works by Nick Vyssotsky and more artists to be announced.
Please note that the activities between 13.15 and 15.00 won’t be broadcast on our livestream. Upon arrival at A Lab you can sign up for one of the activities on a first-come, first-served basis.
🎤 Meet the artists & speakers*
○ Daniël de Zeeuw is an Assistant Professor in digital media culture at the University of Amsterdam who studies chronically online subcultures, conspiracy theories and radicalisation, and will speak on his research into psyop realism.
○ Sophie Publig & Mikkel Rørbo are researchers at the Weibel Institute for Digital Cultures in Vienna, working across meme ecologies, networked subjectivities and , who will present their book Digital Occultism.
○ Francis Tseng is a software developer specialising in simulation and modelling, and lead developer at the Applied Resource Policy Lab, who will run Half-Earth Socialism, the planetary planning game accompanying the 2022 book.
○ Noura Tafeche is a visual artist and independent researcher working on digital militarism, online aesthetics and non-Anglophone meme cultures, who will lead her workshop The Internet is a Horrible Place and I'm Here to Make it Worse, a toolbox for investigating fringe online communities and the violence they produce.
○ Emilia Tapprest is a Finnish-French filmmaker and design researcher who treats digital as an atmospheric, sensing condition, and will give a with Søren Siebel on their project Earth Embeddings.
○ Søren Siebel is an artist working with space, sound, bodies and text to build immersive, near-utopian situations, joining Emilia Tapprest for their on Earth Embeddings.
○ Marina Otero Verzier is an architect and researcher working at the intersection of ecology, technology and activism, who will discuss her research on Tuvalu, set to become the world's first digital nation, in conversation with Margarita Osipian.
○ Nick Vyssotsky is an artist based in upstate New York whose work spans video, sculpture and programming to explore media consumption, conspiracy and waste, showing his piece La La La La La (Inside An Empty Room My Inspiration Flows) in the exhibition.
* Check our channels for more contributors to be announced soon.
More stuff you should know
Date: Saturday 24 October 2026
Time: 11.00 to 17.00 CEST
Location: A Lab, , and our livestream via The Inbetween
Format: A full-day hybrid programme of talks and conversations. Join us in person in or watch from anywhere via The Inbetween.
Tickets: Onsite €27,50/Student €20/Livestream 7,50.
Want or need to watch from the comfort of your chosen location? All of our events are hybrid so you can also buy a ticket to join Capture & Control via our custom livestream. Check out further accessibility information through the link below.
Capture & Control is part of What Was I Looking at Again?, The Hmm’s broader 2026 year theme, exploring how feeds have reshaped the way we perceive, process, and think about the world.
This programme is kindly supported by the Creative Industries Fund NL, AFK and hosted by A Lab.
A gentle cycle for the soiled: Bring the kids and get your brains washed with us, during two brand-new workshops at Brainwash Festival. Check out The Hmm @ Brainwash Festival on Friday 31 October at Tolhuistuin, Amsterdam.
We use algorithms, platforms and AI-driven tools every day, mostly without much sense of what's happening behind the screen. On 31 October, we're bringing our educational programme ai, ai, ai to the IJzaal with two new workshops, not made with AI, but about it, designed for kids aged 9 and up and their grown-ups.
These workshops, developed in collaboration with artist and educator Maria Mombers, turn those invisible systems into something you can see, question and squeeze. In Make your own Slopject, you step into the role of the algorithm: hand over your own data for a token, draw a stranger's data profile from the ball machine, and mould the collectable figurine you're almost certain they'd want to buy. What do they watch, listen to, search for? And is the trade actually fair?
In Squish the System: from facts to vibes, the rule used to be that a photo meant something happened. Now any image could just as easily be AI. We're flooded with pictures made not to tell us anything but to make us feel something: curious, restless, ready to buy. Algorithms squish the world into categories they can read, and images demand rather than describe. A squishy is the perfect object to think with, made not to be looked at but to be grabbed and squeezed and kept in hand. In this workshop you're not the consumer but the maker: design a paper squishy engineered to trigger one specific sensation, and work out what it takes to make it go viral.
Brainwash Festival 2026 runs under the theme the shape of us, on what it means to live together.
Stuff you should know
Date: Friday 31 October 2026
Time: 19:10–20:10: Make your own Slopject | 20: 30–21:30: Squish the System
Location: Tolhuistuin, IJzaal, Amsterdam
Tickets: via Brainwash
The extension of our educational program ai, ai, ai, with two hands-on AI literacy workshops for children from 9–15 years old, is financially made possible by the Young Netizen Programme of the City of Amsterdam.
Save the date – The Hmm turns 10! Join us for a festive evening of performances, workshops and drinks, plus the launch of our anniversary book, at W139, Amsterdam, on Friday 11 December.
For ten years we've tried to trace, interrogate and intervene in the forces shaping our online lives, the algorithmic feed among them. To mark the decade, we're throwing a festive evening at W139, on Friday 11 December.
The night also launches our anniversary publication, Suggested For You: Reflecting on a Decade in the Feed. Part celebration, part reckoning, the book looks back at the algorithmic feed and the decade of internet culture that grew up around it. It gathers essays, interviews, image contributions and artist profiles from Ruba Al-Sweel, Evelyn Austin, Jak Ritger, Soyun Park and Leo Scarin, Noura Tafeche, Neema Githere, Alex Quicho, Constant Dullaart, Mamali Shafahi and Ali Eslami, Danielle , K Allado McDowell, and Aidan Walker. You can pre-order it soon (more about this in our next newsletter); and it'll be available to pick up and buy at the event.
Stuff you should know
Date: Friday 11 December 2026
Times: 19.00–22.00 CET
Location: W139, Amsterdam
Tickets: Free, but please register!
Let us know if you are joining!
This programme is kindly supported by the Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunsten and Het Cultuurfonds. Suggested For You is supported by Mondriaanfonds.
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