Call for Participation:

Where do chatbots live? Analog meme-making workshop
July 6, 2026 at 13:00 – 16.00h
The Hmm, NDSM-plein 125 (NDSM Wharf)
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
https://tinyurl.com/4tdmnrjj

Deadline for registration: July 4, 2026

Dear colleagues,

I am sharing an invitation to an upcoming workshop in Amsterdam that I am organizing with Inte Gloerich (as part of Slow AI Material Playgrounds). Feel free to share the workshop invitation with other folks who might be interested, and, if some of you are in Amsterdam on July 6th, maybe see you there?

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Slow AI and Natalia Stanusch invite you to this material playground in which we map out the material and relational side of chatbots. Through analog meme-making, we will collectively explore, map, and challenge the assumptions embedded in conversation-based AI systems like health bots, assistants like Copilot, Meta AI, and many others we encounter daily. We will then co-create (counter)imaginaries of chatbots, with two lines of inquiry to guide us:

LOCALITY/MATERIALITY: Where do chatbots ‘live’? We define and explore the infrastructures, both physical and imaginary, that sustain chatbots’ seeming intangibility and invisibility. We will map out how different ‘localities’ of chatbots relate to the material processes behind them – such as computing and data flows – and how our intuitive understandings map onto them.

RELATIONALITY: How do users define a chatbot’s role and agency? We explore how we, as users, relate to chatbots through what we share, feel, and expect when we engage with them. We will map out how different relational metaphors, expectations, and emotional exchanges frame these interactions, often granting chatbots a form of agency.

We will conclude by weaving these perspectives together: Does the “where” and “who” change the “what” of a human-chatbot conversation? How does (the way we imagine) a chatbot’s materiality shape its role in our lives? And, how can we reshape the way we relate to and understand chatbots to align with the critical counterimaginaries that might emerge during the session?

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SLOW AI is a research project that aims to foster a critical, ethical, and sustainable relationship with AI by reimagining how we engage with these technologies in our societies, helping us speculate alternative presents and futures with AI technologies. (NWA.1418.24.036)

Natalia Stanusch, a PhD candidate at ASCA, University of Amsterdam, is a researcher at AI Forensics and a research lead for AIxDesign’s “Slow AI” project. Natalia’s work builds on the traditions of critical data and algorithm studies, digital methods, and visual culture.

In collaboration with HvA, Rietveld Academie, and ARIAS Amsterdam and generously funded by the Centre of Expertise Creative Innovation, Slow AI aims to contribute to a more equitable and sustainable technological landscape.

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Space is limited, so please register before July 4th to secure your spot.

Best,

Natalia

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Natalia Stanusch
Researcher, AI Forensics
PhD Candidate, University of Amsterdam
ASCA | Media Studies
n.b.stanusch@uva.nl