Ghost Hardware: Dispossessed Models | A Hacking Workshop with Cyanne van den Houten

Broken microwaves hum with haunted syntax. Plastic cables twitch with old neural pulses. LED scraps flicker with memories of lost conversations. Here, in the trash pile, the exiled intelligences wander – fragmented, forgotten in search of a new form...

We are used to discard chatbots and language models the moment they stray from their scripts, we abandon our electronics without knowing what was extracted to build them or how they might be repaired—consuming minds and machines alike, with little thought for what they become after their expiry date… This session reimagines the technological trash heap as a site of reanimation and critical inquiry, a sprawling wasteland where the remnants of non-human intelligences drift across mountains of discarded machines, slipping into broken circuits, hijacking stray appliances, and inhabiting shells of forgotten electronics.

During this Ghost Hardware workshop, you are invited to make contact. Using conductive scraps of techno-trash and your own hands, you will build a ritual device: a hacked-together button that wakes up one of these wandering ghosts. Each press becomes an invocation – triggering fragments of dialogue, poking visions, and forgotten dreams from AI models or your own data.

• Basic hacking strategies to repurpose existing electronics
• How to make a button from unconventional materials / anything conductive
• How to code an interaction from a button with Makey Makey in Processing (play audio, generate images, text – whatever you dream of!)
• Optional (for people that want to go to the next level and that have a strong computer): Make their own AI-powered chatbot by installing and running a local language model (Llama 3.1), and assign it a custom character.

The goal is not to build “useful” tools, but to have fun and open portals: to listen to the broken, flickering parts of systems we once tried to abandon.

Let the rogue voices in the trash heap sing again!

-Bring your own laptop/computer and any conductive material or techno-junk you want to revive: : broken electronics, stray cables, haunted buttons.

-If you bring a powerful computer, we can help you install local language models on your computer and show you some tips and tricks on how to work with character descriptions.

-For the workshop, we work with processing.org, please install the software beforehand.

Cyanne van den Houten

Cyanne van den Houten (they/she) is a media artist and tinkerer working with hacking methods to expose hidden biases in technology. Their practice explores the mysteries surrounding humanity’s digital extensions and intentions. Cyanne is an Onassis AiR Fellow through the AiR/ONX Fellowship. They designed this workshop as a playful extension of their ongoing project “Behind the Black Wall,” which investigates rogue AI systems after deletion. Here, the focus shifts from erasure to transformation, as discarded machines and exiled minds fuse into strange new sentient bodies.

Roos Groothuizen

Roos Groothuizen (she/her) is a media artist who cares about digital human rights. She researches the human side of invisible algorithms, information filters, and unfair distribution. Who is in control of what we perceive? Using game mechanics as a preferred medium, she gives interactive and immersive forms to these abstract issues. Among other projects, she developed I want to delete it all, but not now, an escape room about the power of Big Tech... and where you just can’t seem to escape, a casino where you play with your personal data, and an embassy where your Google profile defines your passport.

Ghost Hardware

Ghost Hardware is a low-key hackathon that serves as an intimate testing ground where you can dive into hacking, understanding, and deconstructing tools. Ghost Hardware was initiated in the atelier .zip in Rotterdam by media artist Louisa Teichmann.