My name is Vytas Jankauskas. I am an artist and designer intrigued by the visual and sociocultural dissonances brought about or amplified through consumer technologies. My work is meant to intercept, interrogate and occasionally lobotomise devices as they quietly inhabit homes. Tapping into digital hums, I surface and amplify the interplay between consumption, desire, and dependence.

The common lack of excitement in a quotidian gaze towards technologies is a product of corporate fatalism underlining their operational standards. I therefore seek to re-incite a malevolent thrill in the way we engage with mundane appliances, in an attempt understand how their, and in turn our being-connected affect things.
Altar-3000 2022Altar-3000

In a world of chaos, ALTAR-3000 is a long overdue, automated totem of customised belief. Powered by natural language processing, this intelligent home altar performs gimmicky New Age rituals all while generating "prophecies" for headlines retrieved from betting platforms that offer exchanges on near-future political, financial, and other events. The automated sand garden—adorned with paraphernalia that might have meant something once but doesn’t reflect much in the age of multitude of easily digestible truths—disseminates its prophecies on conspiracy forums.

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A Metallic Refrigerator, Freezer, Sitting Inside of a Kitchen 2021A Metallic Refrigerator, Freezer, Sitting Inside of a Kitchen

"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 consists of a melancholically singing AI-enhanced fridge and Gooooose accompanying it on a synth. The duet ironically looks at human-AI "collaboration" whilst simultaneously inviting to perceive today's ubiquitous domestic appliances with revived thrill and re-evoked sentiments of endearment.

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Unfamiliar Convenient 2021Unfamiliar Convenient

Unfamiliar Convenient is set to challenge the limits of smart home objects in order to introduce a range of peculiar behaviors. The first inquiry in an envisioned series studies the relationship between a voice assistant and a vacuum cleaner. The project aims to draw a clearer distinction between the two often coupled definitions, the "internet of things" and "the smart home", as a prerequisite to imagine alternatives for dominant servitude-driven relationships with everyday technologies. What if domestic appliances were to be considered a species?

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We Leak Too 2020We Leak Too

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.

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Cached 2018Cached

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.

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Somestic Media 2018Somestic Media

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.

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How to Build a Water Filter 2015How to Build a Water Filter

'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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