Unsubscribe

We live in a sys­tem that keeps us con­stant­ly con­nect­ed through tech­nol­o­gy, yet many peo­ple feel more alone than ever. Our goal was to look for exit points—to see if it is pos­si­ble to “unsub­scribe” from some soci­etal norms to find new ways of work­ing togeth­er based on coop­er­a­tion instead of com­pe­ti­tion.

We devel­oped “Unsub­scribe” 2026 at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Applied Sci­ences St. Pöl­ten for the Mas­ter­class Exper­i­men­tal Media. It was first exhib­it­ed at the Lucid Dreams Fes­ti­val.

The phys­i­cal part of the instal­la­tion was a large spi­der web made from strings and fab­ric. This visu­al struc­ture rep­re­sent­ed the net­works we are all part of, whether dig­i­tal or social. The instal­la­tion was designed to be immer­sive, using dif­fer­ent mate­ri­als and tech­niques to make these invis­i­ble social struc­tures some­thing you can see and touch.

To con­trast with the feel­ing of being a pas­sive user of tech­nol­o­gy, we includ­ed a coop­er­a­tive ver­sion of the clas­sic game Snake played on an old CRT tele­vi­sion. While most games are about one per­son win­ning or beat­ing some­one else, this ver­sion required play­ers to work togeth­er. For many, this cre­at­ed a moment of dis­rup­tion, sug­gest­ing not every­thing has to be the way we are used to.

The core ideas of the project were expand­ed through five posters that look at dif­fer­ent ways we can reclaim our time, our tools, and our resources:

Unsub­scribe from Alien­ation? The over­ar­ch­ing theme was “Com­mons-based Peer Pro­duc­tion,” which is a way of mak­ing things—like soft­ware or information—where every­one con­tributes and every­one shares the results with­out any­one own­ing them.

Unsub­scribe from Big Tech? Most of our dig­i­tal life is con­trolled by just five mas­sive com­pa­nies that mon­i­tor and prof­it from our data. The project high­lights alter­na­tives like open-source soft­ware and inde­pen­dent social net­works where users have more pri­va­cy and con­trol.

Unsub­scribe from Planned Obso­les­cence? Many prod­ucts are designed to break quick­ly so we have to buy new ones—a prac­tice called “planned obso­les­cence”. We focused on “Open Work­shops” and “Repair Cafés” as spaces where peo­ple can find the tools and help they need to fix their own things and push back against waste.

Unsub­scribe from Food Waste? A large amount of food is thrown away while many peo­ple still go hun­gry. Com­mu­ni­ty gar­dens and food­shar­ing ini­tia­tives were pre­sent­ed as ways to not only save resources but also to build local net­works and improve our rela­tion­ship with nature.

Unsub­scribe from Cap­i­tal­ism! We looked at how the cur­rent sys­tem depends on peo­ple work­ing for less than the val­ue they actu­al­ly cre­ate, with the extra prof­it going to those at the top. This poster explored the need to orga­nize and find new ways to meet the needs of all peo­ple.

Contributors

Con­cept & text: Elias van Gils

Con­cept & design: Elea Pilz

Con­cept & design: Hawa Bajrae­wa

Graph­ic design: Cate­ri­na Schus­ter

Thanks

Markus Win­ters­berg­er

Chris­t­ian Munk

Thomas Wagen­som­mer­er

Markus Passeck­er

Johannes Traun

Jür­gen Haghofer

Matthias Husin­sky