Mixtape Metaphysics is a multimedia installation offering an opportunity to explore pressing questions about our current state of technological saturation. Participate in an interactive human algorithm game, listen in to a series of mixtape meditations, or just come talk. We invite you to slow down, listen, play, and interact with theoretical concepts around philosophy, technology, and religion.
In a world increasingly enamored with Artificial Intelligence, and machines that offer to think for us, Mixtape Metaphysics reminds us to remember how to use the very human machines inside our heads.
On view from March 2025-October 2025.
JULY HOURS:
Saturdays, 12-5pm
Sundays 11-3
Tuesdays 6-9
All other days by chance or appointment.
Algorithmic Flipping
The exhibition's centerpiece, Algorithmic Flipping, features 350 colored squares arranged in a pattern on the wall, concealing a hidden world beneath. Participants must collaborate over time, following algorithmic rules to transform the initial display into its final state.
Participants are invited to perform one step of this human algorithm by selecting a card with specific instructions guiding them to flip one of the squares. The algorithm’s steps are a mix of fate, chance and reason—mathematical equations (Flip the board in column 10x2-4+6-3x3), difficult to decipher directions (Blitzelty blop grin 5 nozo ton distophelment B) and subjective prompts (flip the loneliest board) — that ask us consider how the algorithm is constructed and how it constructs the world around us.
As the instructions are followed over time, person by person, step by step, bit by bit, the installation moves from its initial state to its final form—the complete revelation of the simulated reality that was always there, waiting to be uncovered.
Mixtape Metaphysics
Visitors are also invited to listen (on refurbished walkmen) to a series of unique mixtape lectures featuring musical meditations set to original beats (created by Franklin & Marshall’s Institute of Mechanical Surround.) These tapes explore themes such as artificial intelligence and consciousness, propaganda and information reliability, simulation theory, human-machine relationships, primate intelligence, and philosophical and religious perspectives on technology. They offer a new way of approaching complex ideas, and remind us how to think.
With contributions from influential thinkers, artists, and musicians across time (Bertrand Russell, Max Planck, Iris Murdoch, Noam Chomsky, David Chalmers, Joan Scott, Grace Helton, and others), these soundscapes bridge academic inquiry and musical expression, acknowledging that human intelligence can be captured and communicated in different ways.
Our mixtapes include:
Processing: A Philosophy Mixtape
featuring four groundbreaking audio lectures that reimagine scholarly discourse through the lens of hip-hop and electronic music. Leading philosophers tackle questions like "Are we living in a simulation?" while sound ecologists create immersive soundscapes that bridge academic inquiry and musical expression. This isn't a podcast or a playlist—it's a new form of philosophical engagement.Machines in Between Mixtape:
Part mixtape, part surreal performance, part philosophical experiment, Machines in Between asks you to hear, see, think, and be differently with your machine divinities. Join our eclectic and world-renowned cast of scholars, musicians, filmmakers, and artists on a wild ride through a fun-house of samples, science-fiction, and searing social critique.Me & My Monkey and the Origins of AI:
A man, a chimpanzee, dreams of automated cognition, lurking insanity, and whispers of “extra-species eroticism.” Listen here, for the first time, to a story that is still unfolding, a story of an encounter between scientific curiosity and animal instincts, a story about the origins of machine learning and our world-hurtling age of algorithmic abjection. (Coming in late June 2025)
Throughout the exhibition's run, a series of events with collaborators including influential thinkers, artists and musicians will further deepen engagement with today’s pressing issues around technology, bring people together to explore these ideas together, and guide us in novel, experiential learning and alternate pedagogies.
