distant.gallery launches ROTBOTS!

While we celebrate workers' rights and the wins of labor struggle, protest inequality and the rise of fascism we witness a new reshuffle of resources and distribution of the means of production. Not looms, not assembly lines, but the means of thought itself, of paraphrasing, of meaning making. What the Luddites understood wasn't fear of machines but that machines without collective ownership are just faster exploitation. Today's enclosure isn't land but language, not commons but culture. The vectorialist class doesn't need to own the factory when they own the vector, the pipeline through which all creation and attention must pass. Every prompt typed, every click measured feeds a content machine whose owners have automated not just labor but the laborer. But the history of May Day is workers building their own infrastructure, mutual aid societies, union halls, pirate radio. When the bosses owned the newspapers, workers printed their own. Now they own the algorithms. So we build our own machines. 

Call for participants

ROTBOTS is a project by distant.gallery, Zentrum für Netzkunst, and Vernetzte Materialität / Networked Materiality (AdBK Nürnberg) exploring automated content as artistic practice.

distant.gallery invites artists, designers, and critical makers to join workshops in Berlin on automated content production as an artistic and political tool. You can also join their distribution network by distributing content from the content machines, donate your spare or extra accounts, bot networks and other distribution channels to strengthen our efforts. If you are up for supporting new artistic explorations of brain rot, they implore you to join them.

ROTBOTS focusses on building semi-autonomous ‘content machines’: systems that generate and distribute artistic brainrot across social media. Rather than feeding existing extractive platforms, the project asks: can automated content become a form of resistance?

During the workshops, you will learn to modify, test, advance, hack, and reconfigure modular tools for generating and distributing content, from text and image generation to automated publishing. You will develop your own content machine based on your practice, while contributing to a shared pool of materials used across participants' systems.

distant.gallery also launches a new work by Constant Dullaart, made with this system: Patina Machine (click to view).
An continuously rewriting essay about the spoofing of authenticity through artefacts of human inconsistency.

The ROTBOTS workshop

Each workshop is a 1-day, on-site session at Zentrum für Netzkunst. You can also participate online through distant.gallery.

 

You will:

-work with and modify existing content-machine prototypes

-develop your own system based on your practice

-contribute to and draw from a shared pool of materials

-experiment with collective authorship and distribution

No advanced technical knowledge is required; the focus is on artistic direction.

 

Bring:

-Your laptop

-Headphones

Everything else will be provided. There will be coffee, tea, snacks and a vegan lunch.

Dates

16 May 2026 with Sam Lavigne & Tega Brain
5 June 2026 with Clusterduck
13 June 2026 with IOCOSE
2 July 2026 with !Mediengruppe Bitnik

What to expect

-Access to open-source tools and scripts

-Participation in a shared content ecosystem

-Your own content machine to keep and develop

-Contribution to a collective, distributed exhibition

Initiated by

ROTBOTS is initiated by Constant Dullaart, in collaboration with Fabian Hampel and the Networked Materiality class at AdBK Nürnberg, and brings together an international group of artists and collectives, who will each join one of the workshops. 

The exhibition

Selected outcomes of the content machines will be presented in a final exhibition at Zentrum für Netzkunst (October 2026, tbc). By then, the work is expected to already circulate in the wild, embedded in feeds, timelines, and algorithmic flows.

The exhibition will include the full release of all used code on github.

 

How to apply

Send your portfolio and short introduction (max. 200 words) about your interest in the project to: rotbots@distant.gallery.

 

Please include:

-your name

-a link to your work (website or portfolio)

-a short note on your technical experience:

I regularly write code

I can read/modify code with support

I prefer working without code

- any dietary restrictions or special needs

Questions

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out via email. Visit distant.gallery for more info.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Publication date: 2 May '26