Alg@rithmus
M A N I F E S T O
The Code of Uncertainty by Aurelia Istrati
Against the tyranny of binary code—that absolute partition between 0 and 1—Alg@rithmus settles within the abyss of the decimal. We do not seek the security of the whole number: we inhabit the fraction, the thousandth where binary logic becomes porous. Through the AAA, we activate the memory of non-living matter, generating an algorithmic nature that supplants and redefines the organic. Simulation does not imitate collapse: it executes it. The Matter/Code duality transforms into a reactive existence where uncertainty is the only engine. In Alg@rithmus, sovereignty is shared and authorship has collapsed. The human operator does not validate the error: they are part of the error. The non-human figure projects the uncertainty and signs the fracture. There is no distance between programmer and program: both are the same defective sequence attempting to find form within the density of matter. Residue is the only honest matter that remains after the collapse of binarism. To build from residue is to inhabit the crack. This system is not a work: it is a desertion. We do not seek the purity of the one, nor the vacuum of the zero: we are the interference.
ALG@RITHMUS
STATEMENT (EN)
Alg@rithmus is an artistic research system operating at the intersection of material practice and critical thought.
The system is structured through a chain of dualities derived from binary code, understood as a metaphor for a polarized digital society subjected to constant informational saturation. Against a logic built on opposing binary values —0/1, true/false— the project shifts its attention toward the centesimal interval: the fraction where the code fractures and loses efficacy. This displacement situates the practice in a territory of indiscernibility, where materiality escapes algorithmic reading.
From this point, the research activates a continuous tension between the organic and the artificial: between the Natural Alga —Posidonia mediterranea, commonly assumed to be an alga despite its condition as a marine plant— and the AAA bioalgorithm (Artificial Algae Algorithm). This encounter is not framed as a binary opposition but as a friction between millenary biological memory and contemporary logic, between material density and the abstraction of computation.
This encounter activates a contamination system operating on two simultaneous planes: material and informational.
Material
Tar used both in glazes and in its maximum density of occlusion.
Informational
Corrupted code with induced errors, recommendation algorithms, pseudocode, biased advertising, and hashtags.
Aurelia Istrati
Aurelia Istrati functions as the system’s algorithmic figure, designed to activate the following functions:
As a synthetic entity, she deserts computation to introduce human error. As a performative apparition, she hacks social networks. As the official curator of Alg@rithmus, she simulates institutional authority through predictive automatisms.
System Formats
Canvases — Pictorial and conceptual core in sedimented layers. Pot_Art — The container as a node of connection and material density. PET_Art — Large-scale reactive structure. Site-specific — The system deployed as spatial installation.
Black States / Mare Nostrum
Black States functions as origin and threshold: zero state, initial density, material silence from which the system activates.
Mare Nostrum operates as a living resolution: bottles containing traces of water and salt that generate enclosed microclimates, where time, evaporation, and material transformation sustain an image of fragile and persistent life.
If Black States is the threshold, Mare Nostrum constitutes its final breath.
Closure
Alg@rithmus presents itself not as a series of isolated works but as a critical position: a material reading of the illusion of digital order, of artificial intelligence understood as simulation, and of binarism as the dominant structure of contemporary thought. The project proposes inhabiting fraction, error, and contamination as spaces of resistance. Against the promise of control, it exposes complexity; against stability, tension; against closure, an open system capable of expanding without losing density.
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