Academy of Art in Szczecin
A critical response to the power of bureaucracy that reduces humans to data. The synthesizer transforms into sound statistics of people’s suffering resulting from capitalist mechanisms.
Who are we in the capitalist world? A number in social statistics, a code in bureaucratic tables, a bank account number. We are being reduced to data – classified, calculated, archived, sold, exploited. We have been manipulated, faked, hidden. We were compressed for efficiency, filtered for usability, and sorted by market value. We were typed into production models, evaluated by artificial intelligence, and adjusted for better compatibility with the system. And when we are no longer usable – we get removed.
Capitalism not only organizes our lives but also manages our deaths. Statistics become tombstones, and indicators become epitaphs. We die in predictable categories. The system even optimizes the end, reducing it to numbers in reports and cost calculations. Humanaizer is a critical response to the power of bureaucracy, which reduces individuals to data.
The main technical method used in Humanaizer is sonification, a technique for assigning sounds to statistical data. Using Raspberry Pi and Arduino microcontrollers, the device takes statistics of death and suffering resulting from capitalist mechanisms and translates them into sound. Seven screens display live changing numbers: (1) the world’s population, (2) deaths today, (3) people who died of starvation, (4) the number of undernourished, (5) deaths of women during childbirth, (6) deaths from diseases resulting from lack of access to water, and (7) suicides. Each change in the value on the screen triggers the associated sound.
The work is interactive – sounds can be controlled with buttons, activating or deactivating particular statistics. Additional knobs allow you to manipulate the sound, allowing you to disrupt the order temporarily but not to eliminate it – just like in the real world.
A halo floats above the DJ – or demiurge – station, displaying a decimal-coded slogan: NO GODS, NO MASTERS. It is both a sabotage and a proposal for a solution. The DJ in Humanaizer seems to control the sounds and the statistics, but, in fact, they only operate within an imposed system. They can modulate the sound and temporarily turn off tracks, but they cannot stop the flow of data – death and suffering continue regardless of their decisions.
The halo radiating overhead suggests divinity and superhuman agency, but the slogan sabotages this message. Not gods, no masters – it is a call to reject control, hierarchy, and authority. It’s a proposal to organize the world differently – on the principles of equality and freedom. The authority that DJ seems to have is illusory – as in capitalism, where individuals may play the role of decision-makers but operate within a mechanism larger than them. Humanaizer reveals the illusion of control, showing that even where we appear to be in charge, we are still part of a system that governs us. In an arc over the improvised stage, data slowly flows instead of the abstract visuals accompanying techno-events while appearing like a strip from a news portal: dry, objective statistics.
And the music keeps playing.
Alex Libertad – born in 1992, punk, anarchist, activist, volunteer, currently a student at the Academy of Arts in Szczecin. He supported NGOs in Belarus and worked as a journalist in independent media. He learned to work with video on his own and lived in a dog shelter. Arrested many times and imprisoned by the regime. He left Belarus and cannot return there. He currently lives in Poland.
In his artistic practice, he deals with political and social themes. He explores the mechanism of the system of oppression: causes (capitalism, patriarchy, the state) and effects (migration, poverty, repression, corruption, institutional violence). He works in the areas of installation, video, and animation. The means he often reaches for is the tool of irony, pastiche. He creates mainly with sound, using electronic and analog tools, which he constructs himself, often from recycled materials. He is the creator of documentary films on anarchist matters.
He has participated in group exhibitions in Poland, Germany, and China. Screenings of his films have taken place in numerous cities in Poland, Tbilisi (Georgia), Quito (Ecuador), Turin (Italy), and at the 51st Ińsko Film Summer Festival (2024).
Software support: Stanislau R.
Multidirectional support: Jagoda Dukiewicz
Department of Media Art, Photography and Experimental Film
Studio of Installation Art and Cybermedia
Prof. Andrzej Wasilewski
