Ghost in the Loop is an online exhibition of six experimental artworks that consider the radical shifts in image and content generation where the idea of the end user has changed, and work is no longer made specifically for human audiences.

The works – by Célune Acheampong, Linden Derichs, Valia Lolidou, Mariana Marangoni, Martyna Marciniak and Shaheer Tarar – consider today’s AI as a haunting: a space where histories, images, design, mythologies and errors are all disguised within computation. Join us for special activation of the online exhibition Ghost in the Loop, including a performance by Shaheer Tarar and a sticker swap.

The Compression Zone is a video game performance that explores compression algorithms as one of the primary engines of world-making today.Shaheerperforms the game live, navigating a perilous, multi-resolution dungeon where all the world’s data is sent to be compressed.

Part autobiographical, part grounded in archival research on twentieth-century nationalism, and partly besieged by memes and conspiracy, the game moves through uneven resolutions of rendering and rigour—journeying across South Asia’s digital borderlands and through fiber-optic cables in the Pacific.

We've also produced a special holographic sticker pack for Ghost in the Loop. Come to the event with your own stickers and you can swap for a pack, featuring images from Shaheer Tarar, Valia Lolidou, Martyna Marciniak, Mariana Marangoni, Linden Derichs and Celune Acheampong.
Ghost in the Loop is produced as part of Inverted World Labs, a partnership between The Photographers’ Gallery and the Goethe-Institut London. Unthinking Photography is a strand of The Photographers’ Gallery digital programme and an online platform for mapping and responding to photography’s role in contemporary culture.