Upsetting Settings

Upsetting Settings presents graduation projects initiated by Alexander Roidl, Alice Strete, Angeliki Diakrousi, Joca van der Horst, Natasha Berting, and Zalán Szakács. The concept of this exhibition arises from the idea of the default setting, a situation in which a specific mode of interaction is selected automatically, pre-configured to work out of the box without the need to tinker with its underlying apparatus. Every system comes with default settings predefined by its creators, and most of the time, these settings remain unchanged by us, the users of such systems. These defaults do not represent our needs but are possibly the materialisation of biases from the system's makers, from corporate or political interests, from a society at large. The projects engage with the concept of default modes and propose interventions in their core structure/source/root so as to start thinking collectively about better places from which to begin. You are invited to become root users, active listeners, smart speakers, intentional eaters, counter trolls, sensorial spectators!