The Hmm @ Brainwash Festival

The Hmm presents AI, AI, AI @ Brainwash festival

We use algorithms, platforms and AI-driven tools every day, often without really understanding what’s happening behind the screen. The Hmm’s educational programme, ‘ai, ai, ai’, turns these invisible systems into something you can see, understand, question and play with. During Brainwash festival we’re launching our latest workshops—not involving AI, but about AI—specially designed for children aged 8 and over, and their parents. You can experience ‘Make your own Slopject’ and ‘Squish the System’ at Brainwash festival Ijzaal.

Make your own Slopject Do you ever stop to think that everything you do online is being tracked? Every ‘like’, every scroll and every second you spend watching a video tells us something about you. All those little bits of information together are what we call data. Algorithms use that data to try and predict what you like, so you see more of that sort of content and adverts. Handy, perhaps, but is it actually always fair?

In the ‘Make your own Slopject’ workshop, you’ll step into the role of an algorithm yourself. In exchange for handing over your own data, you’ll receive a token with which you can draw (or ‘buy’) another person’s data profile from the ball machine. What does this person watch? What music do they listen to? What do they search for online? Afterwards, you’ll design (or mould) a collectable figurine that you’re almost certain the person behind the data profile would want to buy.

Squish the System: from facts to vibes For a long time, the rule was: if there’s a photo of it, it must have happened. We now live in an age where any photo could just as easily have been created by AI. Every day we’re inundated with photos, videos and memes, not intended to tell a story, but to make you feel something: curious, restless, in love with a product. Enough to keep you looking, clicking, buying something. It’s not just people watching. Algorithms are squishing the world around us into categories they can understand.

Images, therefore, refer less and less to anything, and increasingly demand something from us. A squishy is the perfect object to explore this. It isn’t made to be looked at, but to do something with: grab it, squeeze it, be unable to let it go. Just like the images around us.

In this workshop, you’re not a consumer of images, but a creator. You’ll design your own paper squishy with a mission: an object that says nothing, but triggers a specific sensation. How do you make it go viral? Which aesthetic works for that, and with which target audience? And what does it need to look like to achieve that?

About The Hmm The Hmm is a platform for internet cultures. We explore and celebrate the creativity that arises from virtual interactions and the interplay with the technologies that make them possible. Through accessible events, research, exhibitions and educational programmes, we offer a curious audience playful and engaging insights into online life. The workshops ‘Make your own Slopject’ and ‘Squish the System: from facts to vibes’ have been developed in collaboration with artist Maria Mombers, who is also one of The Hmm’s tutors.

About Brainwash Festival

Brainwash Festival is the place to be for thought-provoking ideas and visions of the future. At Brainwash Festival, philosophers, scientists, artists and writers come together to explore the big questions of our time and challenge the status quo. We bring together established figures and new voices. We celebrate thinking, doubt and your curiosity.

Brainwash Festival 2026 takes up the theme ‘the shape of us’, through which it explores, from different perspectives, what it means to live together.

More information about the programme TBA.

📅 Date: 31 October 📍 Tolhuistuin ⏱️19:10h – 20:10h: Make your Own Slopject ⏱️ 20:30h – 21:30h: Squish the System

♿ Accessibility notes Find more info on the Tolhuistuin website.