Bernhard Günther is a cultural manager, curator, musicologist and the artistic director of Wien Modern, one of the world's largest contemporary music festivals held in Vienna since 1988. As a passionate visitor and organizer of concerts across diverse genres and formats, and as an occasional musician, he has been intensively engaged with new music and its context for over 25 years.

In this episode, Bernhard and Severin discuss how Wien Modern evolved from its 1980s origins as a response to Vienna's nostalgic classical music scene into a deliberately confusing, friction-generating platform that challenges narrow definitions of what contemporary music can be. Günther explores the festival's 2025 theme "The Great Learning," which responds to Vienna's 37% population growth and increasing diversity by actively addressing questions of representation, discrimination, and who gets heard in classical music spaces. He discusses the tension between data-driven curation and human taste, why festivals must resist becoming "elite things," the dangers of AI in understanding discrimination, and why bringing people together to physically experience music—even when it provokes disagreement—matters more than ever in an age when social media promised connection but delivered polarization instead.

Simon Denny is an artist living and working in Berlin, known for his conceptual work examining technology, power, and contemporary culture. His practice spans diverse media including paintings, sculptures, installations, and exhibition-making, often investigating the cultural footprint of influential technology figures and companies. Denny has exhibited internationally and gained recognition for works addressing tech industry aesthetics, from early pieces about Kim Dotcom and Peter Thiel to recent explorations of defense tech and AI.

In this episode, Simon discusses his latest exhibition "Forces of the Unknown," which uses AI-generated imagery and plotter-painted canvases to draw connections between Italian Futurism and contemporary Silicon Valley ideology. The conversation explores how Marc Andreessen's "Techno-Optimist Manifesto" inspired the work, the shift from consumer tech to defense tech ("hard tech"), and Silicon Valley's evolving relationship with weapons manufacturing. Severin and Simon also examine AI as an artistic tool, the ethics of technological labor displacement, and the role of artists in capturing cultural moments without prescribing political solutions.

Günseli Yalcinkaya is an artist, curator and writer based in London. She is a Contributing Editor at Dazed and the former host of Dazed’s podcast, Logged On, and has appeared in talks and panels at the Architectural Association, BFI, Somerset House, Sónar+D, Serpentine Galleries, Unsound Festival, Vienna Digital Cultures and X Museum. Her essays have been published in CURA, Dazed Magazine, Spike Art, Vogue, Zora Zine and 032c, as well as in books for Aksioma, Julia Stoschek and LAS Art Foundation.

In this episode, Günseli discusses her concept of 'internet folklore,' which connects advanced technologies with cultural practices like folklore and mythmaking. The conversation delves into the ways internet culture influences society, the impact of AI on human interaction and creativity, and the emerging significance of quantum culture. Severin and Günseli also explore her collaborative AV performances and the intriguing parallels between AI and psychedelia.

Dr Mercedes Bunz is Professor of Digital Culture and Society at King's College London's Department of Digital Humanities, where she researches how digital technology transforms knowledge, communication, power, and society. Author of "The Silent Revolution" (2012), an early exploration of how algorithms shape our world, she co-founded the Creative AI Lab with Serpentine Gallery to help artists engage critically with AI technologies on their own terms..

In this episode, Mercedes and Severin discuss how AI represents a fundamentally different technological shift from previous digital revolutions. She demystifies how large language models actually work, explores why we need public AI and open data sets to counter corporate dominance, and challenges the binary thinking around AI—neither savior nor devil—arguing that our fear of machines replacing human work is actually masking deeper anxieties about an out-of-control financial system.

Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley is an artist living and working in Berlin and London. Her work aims to archive the experiences of Black Trans people by creating video games and interactive experiences. Influenced by early gaming history and personal experiences, her work aims to make audiences reflect on their choices and emotions rather than simply consume art passively.

In this conversation with Severin, she discusses her journey from early experimental games to complex social installations such as Soul Station, 2024. Her upcoming show at Serpentine London explores how interactive spaces can help strangers connect emotionally in an increasingly polarized world, challenging traditional gallery experiences while making art more socially functional.

Rebecca Merlic is an artist and architect who uses 3D scanning, game engines and virtual reality to create alternative worlds. Her work emphasises co-creative processes with subjects and innovative uses of data, from biometric tracking to spatial mapping.

In this episode, Severin is joined by Rebecca to discuss her project Kissaten Vienna, a documentation of vanishing coffee house cultures across Vienna, Japan, and Zagreb using 3D scanning and game engines. Together, they explore how emerging technologies can document and reimagine traditional social spaces while raising questions about accessibility and preservation.

How can we rethink computing systems to be more in tune with nature?

In this episode of The Culture and Technology podcast, Claire L. Evans (author of Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet) joins Severin to explore the intersection of life, technology, and the environment.

How is gender bias and discrimination coded into history, reality and AI models?

Claudia Larcher is an artist, filmmaker and AI researcher in Vienna. Her work spans video animation, collage, photography, and installation, and in particular explores the impacts and experimental uses of artificial intelligence.

Severin met with Claudia in her studio to dive into her most recent work: AI and the Art of Historical Reinterpretation, a growing fictional image archive that injects inclusive and diverse representations into historical images and manipulates future AI training data as a form of activism.

As the creative director at The Vinyl Factory, Sean shares the process behind curating Reverb, a multimedia exhibition exploring the intersection of art and sound. In this conversation, Severin and Sean look at the importance of physical context in music consumption, the value of dedicated listening spaces, and how digital platforms can enhance rather than replace analog experiences.

How can we reimagine AI as a collaborative technology?

Eva Jäger is a Curator, Arts Technologist and Creative AI Lead at Serpentine, a contemporary art gallery in London. She recently curated The Call, Mat Dryhurst’s and Holly Herndon’s solo exhibition which proposes new cultural, legal, and technical rituals for art in the age of AI.

Severin and Eva peel back the layers behind The Call, where they discuss the transformation of training data production into a new art form and how cultural institutions can take active roles in shaping emerging technologies through initiatives like data trusts.