Today, we live in a world where every time we turn on our smartphones, we are inextricably tied by data, laws and flowing bytes to different countries, in which every personal expression is framed and mediated by digital platforms, and where new kinds of currencies, financial exchange and even labour bypass corporations and governments. At the same time, the same technologies increase governmental powers of surveillance, allow corporations to extract ever more complex working arrangements and do little to slow the construction of actual walls along actual borders. On the one hand, the agency of individuals and groups is starting to approach that of nation states; on the other, our mobility and hard-won rights are under threat. What tools do we need to understand this world, and how can art assist in envisioning and enacting other possible futures?

State Machines. Art, Work, and Identity in an Age of Planetary-Scale Computation. investigates the new relationships between states, citizens and the stateless made possible by emerging technologies. Focussing on how such technologies impact identity and citizenship, digital labour and finance, the project joins five experienced partners from Slovenia, Croatia, Cyprus, the Netherlands and the UK together with a range of artists, curators, theorists and audiences. Workshops on blockchain technology, research into new cognitive models and forms of citizenship, and conferences on democratic participation and networked cultural production will be organised alongside art exhibitions, new commissions and publications, with the aim of building new kinds of literacy for digital understanding and participation. State Machines insists on the need for new forms of expression and new artistic practices to address the most urgent questions of our time, and seeks to educate and empower the digital subjects of today to become active, engaged, and effective digital citizens of tomorrow. (For more information look EC.)