Fixing Bugs
Ksenia Mikhailova

The rapid advancement of technologies, paradigm shifts, and the acceleration of information flows challenge the human psyche’s adaptive capacities and the integrity of its perception of self and the world. Into these vulnerabilities seep the neuroses of modernity, comparable to bugs in computer programs. In English, bugs also mean insects. These program errors conflict with the main code, leading to instability.

Under the influence of an expanding spectrum of information channels, do we not, on a mental level, experience a daily repetition of Gregor Samsa’s story—the protagonist of Kafka’s Metamorphosis? How quickly can we absorb the new, integrating it into existing categories of knowledge without inner conflicts?

These questions unfold in the project as a fixation of a hypothetical moment of the present, positioned between two temporal poles—the future, represented by a neural network generating images, and the past, evoked through the printing of these images using the archaic technique of etching.

The resulting printed graphics are no longer fully what they once were, nor can they ever be considered a traditional etching.

This moment of the present is a snapshot of an endless process—adaptation, modification, learning, development, destruction, replacement, augmentation, metamorphosis, and evolution.