In Conversation: Andrea Mikyska on Archives, Ecology, and AI
- Amy Jiang
- 29 minutes ago
- 6 min read
In the feedback loops of machine learning, certain bodies, cultures, and ways of knowing are made visible, distorted, or erased. Like ghosts—excluded yet ever-present—they haunt the machine. They slip through algorithmic blind spots, bend systems’ logic, and disrupt with glitches and ruptures that unsettle computational control. But ghosts don’t just haunt—they rewire. They assert presence, reframe meaning, and speak in forms the system was never trained to understand. Through cracks in the loop, they reemerge as designers of new imaginaries for themselves and for the communities the system failed to see. Ghosts in the Feedback Loop is a virtual exhibition that invites artists to work inside those cracks—to treat algorithmic systems not as endpoints of automation but as haunted infrastructures alive with memory, loss, and rebellion. This interview is part of TechnoMirage, UAAD’s latest curatorial & publishing project exploring the intersections of artificial intelligence, speculative design, and collective imagination. Emerging from a multi-format event series—including a virtual exhibition, an online panel co-hosted with Parsons, and an IRL gathering of workshops, talks, and performances—the publication extends these dialogues into an archival form.
About the Artists
Andrea Mikyska received her master's degree in Supermedia from the Academy of Arts, Architecture, and Design in Prague. Her artistic projects explore speculative futures and their effects on technology, ecology, and culture by delving into computer simulations. She examines the relationships between human-made technologies and environmental ecosystems using mainly 3D, 2D, and generative programs, igniting discussion on pressing ecological and Post internet challenges.
Q: Could you tell us a bit about your background, and how your work connects to the theme “Ghosts in the Feedback Loop”?
My background lies in working across moving image, storytelling, and digital environments, often exploring dream scenarios and studying the structures and inner mechanisms of natural organisms. I present these investigations using technology as a tool to convey my points of interest, often capturing them as hybrid forms and partial archives.
In relation to Ghosts in the Feedback Loop, my work connects through its interest in what might remain unseen, erased, or misread by dominant systems. I often build “living archives” that shift and adapt, creating artworks that explore how machines and living organisms experience different biological times and perspectives, and questioning what it means to be alive. Much like ghosts slipping through cracks in the machine, these works reframe what has been overlooked, proposing alternative rhythms of time, ecological cycles, and speculative futures that resist computational control.
Q: How do you perceive AI—as a tool, a collaborator, a medium, a subject, or something else? And how does that shape your artistic process?
For me, AI is still mostly limited to being a tool, because I haven’t yet had the experience of interacting with humanoid robots, AI companions, or robotic pets. I also haven’t used medical, exoskeleton, or surgical robots, and I don’t work in industrial heavy manufacturing. So, my daily interactions with AI are mostly with large language models, AI assistants as recommendation engines, and generative AI, which I see as an enhancement of previous tools designed for faster internet searches or, in art and design, for helping complete technical tasks.
I use AI creative tools primarily in a technical way: to create new plugins, remesh 3D models, enhance images, or perform retouching. So far, the algorithms are not capable of fully supporting or training the specific visualizations I have in mind and can only assist with technical tasks rather than realizing my exact vision. I am not concerned by this, as I enjoy my creative process.
Lately, I often find myself in a displaced position when exploring current visual AI tools. I also feel the economic pressure growing with AI creative toolkits. These tools are becoming increasingly inaccessible. To create seriously, you now need multiple paid tools, each locked behind subscriptions, often built on original artworks that are resold to users, and the market is entangled in endless subscriptions and fake email addresses.
Q: What futures does your featured work gesture toward or warn against? Who do you imagine as your audience, and how do you hope they are impacted?
My featured work gestures toward futures where human and non-human lives are woven together through shared temporalities, and where archives are not static containers but living entities that carry cycles of growth, decay, and renewal. These speculative futures imagine time rebuilt from ecological cycles, nocturnal life, and forgotten rituals, offering a re-enchanted sense of duration beyond capitalist rhythms. If I were to imagine my audience, it would be those seeking ancient forms, physicality, and a sense of ethereality.
The ecological studies I draw upon are reversible and therefore positive, opening into possibilities rather than closures. In this way, the project creates a biome and an infrastructure where technologies and flesh intertwine, becoming a new myth translated into digital messages as well as into pure observations of life forms—an echo of science itself in its fascination. This artwork doesn’t fix these relationships but allows them to mutate and shift.
To destabilize anthropocentric narratives and encourage viewers to imagine futures beyond human-centered progress is part of this process of shifting. I hope my artwork builds on the archive by transforming it into a living Art of Noticing, an invitation to attend to what already surrounds us, what we can touch, redefine, or sense as if held in a time capsule. Rather than preserving the past in fixed form, the archive here becomes mutable, porous, and unstable—a space where memory and ecology interlace. Its impact, I hope, lies in fostering a technological balance that does not overwhelm but coexists with organic processes, and in encouraging sensitivity to fragile, liminal states.
Q: Are there particular communities, histories, or environments your work remains in conversation with? How do those relationships evolve over time?
The relationships my work maintains with communities, histories, and environments change and evolve gradually. With each new project, I open new ways of working and discovering topics. Currently, I am developing a project on nocturnal pollinators and light pollution, which has shifted my practice toward creating diagrams, gathering data differently, and developing a methodology that allows me to extract patterns for my objects. This project moves me further from purely virtual display toward archival work and handmade techniques. At the same time, every conversation, my social environment, and even the latest films or music I encounter add new layers to my perspective, subtly shaping the evolution of my work.
Q: What do you see as the most urgent threats or uncertainties we may face in the coming decade with the rise of AI?
I think in the next decade we will move more and more from imagining the future to living the future. The sentence “ahh, that’s like from this movie” will become truer than ever, and all the philosophical questions raised by transhumanist thinkers and cyberpunk storytellers will be answered by the majority of humanity. Ethical dilemmas and economic structures will set society apart even more, because we could already face humanoid robots for labor and romantic companionship, robotic wounds that heal faster than flesh, anti-aging mechanisms, and military enhancements. But these technologies won’t be accessible to everyone, creating a new social “AI gap” between the privileged and the dispossessed. So far, I don’t see those in power preparing for this ostracized future, or figuring out how to make technologies both accessible and responsibly regulated.
Q: Are there any theories, books, or artists you’d like to recommend in your current areas of interest?
I’ve been really drawn to Valentina Tanni’s Exit Reality. Her exploration of digital spaces and the strange, hallucinatory logic of online worlds resonates with my own interest in hybrid forms. Anna Kornbluh’s Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late Capitalism made me rethink how creative work is shaped by our culture’s obsession with instant experience. T.J. Demos’ Radical Futurisms excites me in how it imagines speculative futures and multispecies thinking, which I find inspiring for my own projects. In Search of Lost Time by Proust remains a touchstone for understanding memory, time, and temporality—ideas that continually surface in the way I work with archives and time-based forms.
I’m also drawn to theories that make us think differently about perception and consciousness. For example, the Third Man Phenomenon, where people sense an unseen presence guiding them in extreme situations, fascinates me because it highlights how the mind can expand beyond ordinary awareness under pressure. Similarly, the Proteus Effect shows how our digital avatars can shape our behavior, revealing how identity and perception are more fluid than we often assume. Metanoia—the idea of profound personal transformation triggered by crisis or deep reflection—also inspires me, showing how shifts in perspective can fundamentally change the way we experience the world. Together, these ideas speak to the surprising and often hidden ways our minds respond to situations, environments, and experiences.
Lead Editor: Amy Xiaofan Jiang
Assistant Editor: Paridhi Garg