From self-guided cars to AI-controlled weaponery systems, “autonomous systems” has become an omnipresent buzzword in today’s media. While the current use of the term is focused often on political and ethical aspects of self-steering and self-learning algorithms and digital technologies, the historical idea of autonomy includes discourses about sovereignity of nations as well as Kant’s reflections on the autonomy of art. Yet the multitude of concepts and ideas related to the term “autonomous systems” makes it often hard to define what exactly is behind it.

The project “autonomous systems”, carried out by the Graz-based platform mur.at in 2020-21, aims to question this buzzword from a creative-critical approach. A team of five young artists is developing a collective working process that itself is modeled after a generative, “autonomous” system. In this process, different approaches, thoughts, tools and techniques of work related or drawn from aspects of autonomy and system theory are explored to collectively create works of art. The focus of the project is not to define or fully explain what autonomous systems are, but to highlight pecularities, contradictions and fascinations through the lens of artistic practice(s).