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Episode page and full transcript: lerandom.art/episodes/strange-rules-and-protoc…
In this episode, host Peter Bauman (Monk Antony, Le Random's editor in chief) speaks with artists Trevor Paglen (lerandom.art/subjects/trevor-paglen) and Primavera De Filippi (lerandom.art/subjects/primavera-de-filippi) about Protocol art.
The occasion is Strange Rules, the landmark group berggruenarts.org/en/exhibitions/current-exhib… co-conceived by Hans Ulrich Obrist (lerandom.art/subjects/hans-ulrich-obrist), Holly Herndon (lerandom.art/subjects/holly-herndon), and Mat Dryhurst (lerandom.art/subjects/mat-dryhurst), running at the Palazzo Diedo in Venice for the full duration of the Biennale. The show offers the most institutionally significant framing of protocol art to date, and Paglen and De Filippi represent two of its most distinct vantages.
The conversation opens with the question of how each artist situates their practice within the protocol framework. Paglen, long known as a revealer of hidden infrastructures, reflects on a career built between systems observation and systems intervention. He and on how his new work Voyager marks a turn inward, toward consciousness rather than exposure. De Filippi, a longtime Protocol art theorist and one of the few artists to self-define as a protocol artist, walks through her Protocolism Manifesto and the decade-long Plantoid project that preceded it, sharpening a key distinction: the difference between making art on top of a protocol and making the protocol itself as the creative act.
Meanwhile, our Monday Editorial with Shohei Fujimoto (lerandom.art/editorial/shohei-fujimoto-on-reme…) completes our Venice Biennale (lerandom.art/subjects/venice-biennale) coverage for the week. (More to come!)
Also in this episode: OpenAI (lerandom.art/subjects/openai), Sam Altman (lerandom.art/subjects/sam-altman)
Read next: Living Aesthetics: A Grammar of Protocol Art and Worldbuilding (lerandom.art/editorial/living-aesthetics-a-gra…), Trevor Paglen on Technological Points of View (lerandom.art/editorial/trevor-paglen-trevor-pa…)
Listen next: Ep. 38, 2025 Art in Review with thefunnyguys, Conrad House & Peter Bauman (lerandom.art/episodes/2025-art-in-review-with-…), Ep. 43, New York Frieze Week—Michael Connor, Regina Harsanyi & Karyn Nakamura with Peter Bauman (lerandom.art/episodes/new-york-frieze-week-mic…)
Chapters 📖:
Introduction
Where do their practices meet protocols?
Why does Hans Haacke matter to Paglen?
Who counts as a protocol artist?
What happens when a model prompts you?
How does Plantoid reproduce itself?
Why show protocol art at the Biennale?
Why is protocol art going mainstream?
Is AI today's photography moment?
Which algorithms are people afraid of?
Why run open source models locally?
Why avoid the word consciousness?
What is a symbiont?
What is it like to be a bot?
Does protocol art make copying moot?
