Vytas Jankauskas is a media artist, designer, and educator specializing in connected objects and artificial intelligence. His practice critically examines how technology shapes mundane spaces and rituals.
Vytas' work has been showcased at notable venues including the Medialab Matadero, V&A Digital Design Weekend, Tate Modern Late Exchange, CCCB (with Superflux), Chroniques Biennale, Chronus Art Center, Salone Internazionale del Mobile, ISEA, and Cité du Design St.Etienne, among others.
Currently, he is the Head of Digital Pool at HEAD–Genève (Geneva University of Art and Design) and leads interdisciplinary programmes at the Innovation Lab of La Plateforme in Marseille.
From 2019 to 2021, Vytas was the Head of Research and Creation at the Chronus Art Center Lab in Shanghai. In 2021, he also served as an Adjunct Faculty member at NYU ITP, Tisch School of the Arts. Prior to these roles, he worked as a designer at the critically acclaimed speculative futures design practice Superflux in London, from 2015 to 2018.
E: vytas@vjnks.com
CV: 2025
Vytas Jankauskas is a media artist, designer, and educator navigating technodomestic romance through connected objects and artificial intelligence. Using lobotomised everyday devices—twisted voice assistants, conspiratorial smart home altars, and personified refrigerators—he hyperbolises technology-infused domestic spaces to make their intricacies visible.
Projects
Other Work
Latent Intimacies is a collaborative project using open-source AI models to explore new forms of human-machine intimacy. Producing three technical prototypes, we investigated how these technologies can evoke feelings of latency, vulnerability, and connection.
In a world of chaos, ALTAR-3000 is a long-overdue, automated totem of customised belief. Powered by AI, this intelligent home altar enacts New Age rituals while generating “prophecies” from headlines scraped off betting platforms that trade in near-future political, financial, and other unfolding events.
"You should also consider that a refrigerator is not a machine and therefore not a freezer" was also part of the project’s title—generated by the refrigerator itself. In collaboration with experimental musician GOOOOOSE (Han Han), the performance features a melancholically singing, AI-enhanced fridge, accompanied by GOOOOOSE on synth.
Unfamiliar Convenient sets out to challenge the limits of smart home objects by introducing a spectrum of peculiar, non-normative behaviors. The project examines the evolving relationship between a voice assistant and a vacuum cleaner. What if domestic appliances were considered not as tools, but as a species?
Besides listening to voice commands, the interactive voice assistant "listens" for unencrypted network communications from other artworks in the exhibition, appropriating captured content to its own ends.
Cached engages with the repercussions of our individual online presence. Our online personality is cached, used to create a digital model of each of us to learn as much as possible. The Cached experience gives you a glimpse at how algorithms have learned to view us and the assumptions they make.
Somestic Media defines a trio of connected objects, retrofitting complex social media interactions within the domestic appliances from the last century. An alarm clock, a radio, and a TV, distill and encompass our mundane digisocial dilemmas, from stalking, to swipe-right and FOMO.
How to Build a Water Filter Youtube tutorial from the future reshapes our notions of nationality and citizenship, through a near-future microcosm, in which all water has become commodified.
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Feelings towards machine latency, vulnerability, & connection: I gave a talk at Huidenclub in Rotterdam, as part of the Feelings, Inc. exhibition by PrivacySalon, where I shared ideas and references that informed the Latent Intimacies project.
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Latent Intimacies at Medialab Matadero: Together with Valeria Castillo, one of the collaborators on Latent Intimacies, I gave a presentation at Medialab Matadero as part of the LAB#04 Synthetic Minds collaborative prototyping residency.
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Social Networks of Tomorrow: For two years (2022–2023), I organised Social Networks of Tomorrow, an interdisciplinary programme at the Innovation Lab of La Plateforme in Marseille. This four-month initiative brought together students from across Europe to develop concepts for alternative, small-scale social networks, inspired by the self-organisation of close-knit communities. The 2023 edition was documented through a detailed logbook, and I also gave a short talk at UNFINISHED:LIVE and wrote an essay exploring possible futures for social networks—and who might find a place within them.
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LRT Opus Kino Pusryčiai: Unė Liandzbergytė pakvietė į laidą trumpai pakalbėti apie ATOKAITA2001 projektą su Simonu Jončiu, šiaip pajuokauti bei pasidalinti muzika iš mėgstamų filmų (mano atveju, serialų).
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Post-internetinis menas: Pakviestas Gyčio Dovydaičio ir on:real projekto pakalbėjau apie post internetą, ar mano projektai telpa į jo rėmus. Taip pat apžvelgėm kelis kitus mano mėgiamų menininkų projektus, pakilnojom skaitmeninio meno sklaidos eksponavimo naštą.
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Unfamiliar Convenience: Dissecting Haunted Everyday Technologies : Invited by the Duke Kunshan University’s Humanities Research Center’s Media Lab as part of Media and Arts Speaker Series, I gave an online presentation about dissecting everyday technologies as part of my practice.
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UNKNOWN: Yin Xiuzhen X CAC Lab: s part of the A&T@ programme, conceived by ZHANG Ga, which envisions collaborations between established Chinese visual artists—who typically do not engage with technology in their practice—and the Chronus Art Center's Lab in Shanghai. For the third session of the programme, held in collaboration with the ZHI Art Museum in Chengdu, artist Yin Xiuzhen was invited to temporarily set aside her usual formats to explore technology as a new medium. As the Director of Research-Creation at the Lab, I was entrusted with leading a team of media artists in the conceptualisation and development of the UNKNOWN piece—identifying technological metaphors, tools, and the relationships between them.
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Future Design Podcast: As part of the FUN PALACE exhibition curated by Bruce Bo Ding, we got a chance to reunite with my old comrade Jon Flint and record a podcast! We talked about our general practice and interests, good old days at Superflux, and explained the buts and the whys behind our nerdy projects.
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Sensitive Vectors: Throughout 2019, I ran a series of hands-on workshops on facial and emotion recognition, mixing creative coding and speculative design. Having tried different techniques of facial analysis themselves, participants would try to propose less problematic near-future use cases for facial technologies.
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Emotion Recognition Mirror: While working at Superflux, for ‘The Future Starts Here’ exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum, I helped develop an emotion recognition mirror that displays satirical ads based on spectators' assumed emotional states.
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Our Friends Electric: I worked on the sound design and helped on set for ‘Our Friends Electric’, a short film by Superflux commissioned by Mozilla Foundation, exploring the futures of automated voice assistants.
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Discount Futures: In collaboration with Jon Flint, we hosted a two-part workshop at the Goldsmiths' Design Summer School, introducing visiting students from Miriam College in the Philippines to speculative design. Participants used DIY and Jugaad techniques to address urgent climate scenarios and imagine everyday devices from the near future.
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Assembling Intelligence: I co-organised a two-day interdisciplinary symposium, held at HEAD–Genève, exploring alternative perspectives on AI through art and design. The symposium brought together international speakers—from artists to scientists—and featured workshops, performances, and screenings.
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Something EP: My first self-released electronic music EP under the alter ego Modern Online began as a sentimental goodbye to Shanghai. But as the project stretched over time, it gradually evolved into a broader ode to melancholic domesticity.
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Allez bonne nuit : Nous avons réalisé un court-métrage autour de personnes dormant dans la réalité virtuelle, en collaboration avec le réalisateur Francesco Garbo.
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Web3 et des nouveaux réseaux sociaux: J’ai évoqué le Web3 dans le cadre des réseaux sociaux décentralisés et présenté un aperçu du programme interdisciplinaire Web3 : Réseaux sociaux de demain, à La Plateforme, à Marseille.
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WiFI Psychic: We did a workshop with Leon Eckert at Chronus Art Center introducing basic principles of internet security and why it’s important to strive for privacy as much as possible. We used network sniffing—ARP spoofing and packet reconstruction—and Python to generate graphics based on intercepted network data.
-
ATOKAITA2001: With my dear friend Simonas Jončys, a.k.a Simon Jean-Chic, we made an album that revisited, revived, remixed, and reinterpreted Lithuanian pop songs from around the year 2000. Through leitmotifs of escapism, exploration, holiday romance and heartbreak, the album is a journey into a subset of the nation’s sonic history in light of contemporary soundscapes.
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DR. CORONA ONLINE: I helped artist YE Funa develop a natural language processing roboadvisor trained on Chinese ‘chicken soup’, a newspaper correspondence doctor popular in the 90s, that used to give advice based on common sense rather than verified medicinal knowledge. The peace is part of We online exhibition.
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Shoppers Exposed: Together with AI researcher Claire Glanois, we held a workshop at the Chronus Art Center in Shanghai that used machine learning to analyze participants’ Taobao (China’s equivalent of Amazon) purchase histories and predict what they might buy next by generating absurd new product names.
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Conspiracy: I designed the logo for the Center of Investigative Journalism's (CIJ) Logan Symposium 2018, held at Goldsmiths', University of London.
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Defrag: I made different visuals for DEFRAG event series at the Somerset House in London, spanning across several years exploring the role technology plays in the development, production and consumption of art and culture.
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Mitigation of Shock: While at Superflux, I helped design an artificial city view through a window of a London flat, heavily affected by climate change in 2050, as well as create the soundscape for the installation. Mitigation of shock was part of the ‘After the End of the World’ (2017) exhibition at the CCCB in Barcelona.
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HERACLE555: In collaboration with Félicien Goguey we have built a prototype for an episode-based multimedia experience. Heracle555 is a series of analog audio synthesiser modules connected to a virtual environment. Twelve synthesisers–episodes are based on the Twelve Labours of Hercules. With each new episode, sounds and challenges become increasingly more complex. Heracle555 can also be used as an autonomous analog synthesiser.
-
Feelings towards machine latency, vulnerability, & connection: I gave a talk at Huidenclub in Rotterdam, as part of the Feelings, Inc. exhibition by PrivacySalon, where I shared ideas and references that informed the Latent Intimacies project.
-
Assembling Intelligence: I co-organised a two-day interdisciplinary symposium, held at HEAD–Genève, exploring alternative perspectives on AI through art and design. The symposium brought together international speakers—from artists to scientists—and featured workshops, performances, and screenings.
-
Latent Intimacies at Medialab Matadero: Together with Valeria Castillo, one of the collaborators on Latent Intimacies, I gave a presentation at Medialab Matadero as part of the LAB#04 Synthetic Minds collaborative prototyping residency.
-
Something EP: My first self-released electronic music EP under the alter ego Modern Online began as a sentimental goodbye to Shanghai. But as the project stretched over time, it gradually evolved into a broader ode to melancholic domesticity.
-
Social Networks of Tomorrow: For two years (2022–2023), I organised Social Networks of Tomorrow, an interdisciplinary programme at the Innovation Lab of La Plateforme in Marseille. This four-month initiative brought together students from across Europe to develop concepts for alternative, small-scale social networks, inspired by the self-organisation of close-knit communities. The 2023 edition was documented through a detailed logbook, and I also gave a short talk at UNFINISHED:LIVE and wrote an essay exploring possible futures for social networks—and who might find a place within them.
-
Allez bonne nuit : Nous avons réalisé un court-métrage autour de personnes dormant dans la réalité virtuelle, en collaboration avec le réalisateur Francesco Garbo.
-
LRT Opus Kino Pusryčiai: Unė Liandzbergytė pakvietė į laidą trumpai pakalbėti apie ATOKAITA2001 projektą su Simonu Jončiu, šiaip pajuokauti bei pasidalinti muzika iš mėgstamų filmų (mano atveju, serialų).
-
Web3 et des nouveaux réseaux sociaux: J’ai évoqué le Web3 dans le cadre des réseaux sociaux décentralisés et présenté un aperçu du programme interdisciplinaire Web3 : Réseaux sociaux de demain, à La Plateforme, à Marseille.
-
Post-internetinis menas: Pakviestas Gyčio Dovydaičio ir on:real projekto pakalbėjau apie post internetą, ar mano projektai telpa į jo rėmus. Taip pat apžvelgėm kelis kitus mano mėgiamų menininkų projektus, pakilnojom skaitmeninio meno sklaidos eksponavimo naštą.
-
WiFI Psychic: We did a workshop with Leon Eckert at Chronus Art Center introducing basic principles of internet security and why it’s important to strive for privacy as much as possible. We used network sniffing—ARP spoofing and packet reconstruction—and Python to generate graphics based on intercepted network data.
-
Unfamiliar Convenience: Dissecting Haunted Everyday Technologies : Invited by the Duke Kunshan University’s Humanities Research Center’s Media Lab as part of Media and Arts Speaker Series, I gave an online presentation about dissecting everyday technologies as part of my practice.
-
ATOKAITA2001: With my dear friend Simonas Jončys, a.k.a Simon Jean-Chic, we made an album that revisited, revived, remixed, and reinterpreted Lithuanian pop songs from around the year 2000. Through leitmotifs of escapism, exploration, holiday romance and heartbreak, the album is a journey into a subset of the nation’s sonic history in light of contemporary soundscapes.
-
UNKNOWN: Yin Xiuzhen X CAC Lab: s part of the A&T@ programme, conceived by ZHANG Ga, which envisions collaborations between established Chinese visual artists—who typically do not engage with technology in their practice—and the Chronus Art Center's Lab in Shanghai. For the third session of the programme, held in collaboration with the ZHI Art Museum in Chengdu, artist Yin Xiuzhen was invited to temporarily set aside her usual formats to explore technology as a new medium. As the Director of Research-Creation at the Lab, I was entrusted with leading a team of media artists in the conceptualisation and development of the UNKNOWN piece—identifying technological metaphors, tools, and the relationships between them.
-
DR. CORONA ONLINE: I helped artist YE Funa develop a natural language processing roboadvisor trained on Chinese ‘chicken soup’, a newspaper correspondence doctor popular in the 90s, that used to give advice based on common sense rather than verified medicinal knowledge. The peace is part of We online exhibition.
-
Future Design Podcast: As part of the FUN PALACE exhibition curated by Bruce Bo Ding, we got a chance to reunite with my old comrade Jon Flint and record a podcast! We talked about our general practice and interests, good old days at Superflux, and explained the buts and the whys behind our nerdy projects.
-
Shoppers Exposed: Together with AI researcher Claire Glanois, we held a workshop at the Chronus Art Center in Shanghai that used machine learning to analyze participants’ Taobao (China’s equivalent of Amazon) purchase histories and predict what they might buy next by generating absurd new product names.
-
Sensitive Vectors: Throughout 2019, I ran a series of hands-on workshops on facial and emotion recognition, mixing creative coding and speculative design. Having tried different techniques of facial analysis themselves, participants would try to propose less problematic near-future use cases for facial technologies.
-
Conspiracy: I designed the logo for the Center of Investigative Journalism's (CIJ) Logan Symposium 2018, held at Goldsmiths', University of London.
-
Emotion Recognition Mirror: While working at Superflux, for ‘The Future Starts Here’ exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum, I helped develop an emotion recognition mirror that displays satirical ads based on spectators' assumed emotional states.
-
Defrag: I made different visuals for DEFRAG event series at the Somerset House in London, spanning across several years exploring the role technology plays in the development, production and consumption of art and culture.
-
Our Friends Electric: I worked on the sound design and helped on set for ‘Our Friends Electric’, a short film by Superflux commissioned by Mozilla Foundation, exploring the futures of automated voice assistants.
-
Mitigation of Shock: While at Superflux, I helped design an artificial city view through a window of a London flat, heavily affected by climate change in 2050, as well as create the soundscape for the installation. Mitigation of shock was part of the ‘After the End of the World’ (2017) exhibition at the CCCB in Barcelona.
-
Discount Futures: In collaboration with Jon Flint, we hosted a two-part workshop at the Goldsmiths' Design Summer School, introducing visiting students from Miriam College in the Philippines to speculative design. Participants used DIY and Jugaad techniques to address urgent climate scenarios and imagine everyday devices from the near future.
-
HERACLE555: In collaboration with Félicien Goguey we have built a prototype for an episode-based multimedia experience. Heracle555 is a series of analog audio synthesiser modules connected to a virtual environment. Twelve synthesisers–episodes are based on the Twelve Labours of Hercules. With each new episode, sounds and challenges become increasingly more complex. Heracle555 can also be used as an autonomous analog synthesiser.