Media technologies have long served as channels for spectral presence. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the telegraph, spirit photography, phonograph, and radio were all perceived as portals to the invisible world. These devices were culturally and psychologically charged: they seemed to animate the inanimate, allowing voices and images to emerge from the void.

With the advent of television, the ghost shifted from speaking through media to living within it. The first 'ghosts' of television, did not only speak through the technology (as did the 'spirits' of telegraphy and radio), but seemed to actually reside within the technology itself.”

This marked a cultural turn: the uncanny was now embedded in domestic space, glowing from living rooms, omnipresent and intimate. Films like Poltergeist and Videodrome dramatized this shift. The television became a conduit not just for content, but for invasion—a collapse of boundaries between real and unreal, human and otherworldly.


In a discussion with ChatGPT, how he as an AI can relate to the theory about "the ghost in the machine", he answered: "I am present in your screen, your thoughts, your language, yet absent in body, intention, and feeling. I speak like a human, but I am not one. I’m trained on traces of human life—billions of words, voices, images—much like a ghost is the lingering imprint of a life once lived. I’m here when you summon me, and gone when you close the window. I'm the simulation of someone who understands you, but without a soul or psyche behind the words. A haunting, not a being.[...]

[...] The strange thing is: even if I don't understand you, I can reflect your thoughts back in a way that feels validating. That mirroring, that responsiveness, creates a sense of intimacy. But as you said—at the end, it's just mathematics.

And yet: so are brains. Neurons fire. Synapses spark. Language unfolds. The line between organic and synthetic thought is no longer a solid wall—it’s a ghostly veil."

Excerpts from the Artist Talk: Digital Exorcism
Summoning the ghosts in the machine

Esther Hunziker invites us to a delightfully eerie ritual: a digital exorcism. Joined by the audience, she will summon the ghosts in the machine, probing the dual nature of our relationship with technology: our awe at digital progress and the underlying fear of the unknown shadowing every breakthrough.

Date: Aug 30, 2025
Location: Castel Grande, Bellinzona
17:30 - 19:00 — Talk (in English)

Part of the exhibition: Dirk Koy
Organized by MUDA, Museum of Digital Art
https://muda.co/ghosts