In algorithmic translation

The Copernicus Science Centre showed “In algorithmic translation” only during the 16th Przemiany Festival, which this year asked “Is AI thinking for you?”. The festival exhibition ran for three days, 2-4 October 2026, in the Centre’s conference centre, and admission to the festival was free.

The Copernicus Science Centre on the exhibition:

We are increasingly coming to understand the world through the lens of algorithms. Artificial intelligence is becoming an intermediary between us and reality. It processes data and recognises patterns to generate new content, create evocative simulations and uncover relationships that we might not otherwise notice. Like any translation, this one is not neutral either.

Algorithms organise the world according to their own rules. Some data highlight certain aspects, whilst others omit them; they create new categories and suggest different interpretations. Sometimes they lose sight of the context, fail to distinguish between facts and opinions, or simply make things up, presenting content that sounds credible but is unsubstantiated. The way in which information is organised therefore influences what we perceive and the picture of reality we construct. How do algorithms explain the world to people, and how do they change the very process of understanding it?

The creators of the ‘In algorithmic translation’ exhibition are attempting to answer these questions from various perspectives. At the exhibition, you’ll see, amongst others, a robot trying to find a needle in a haystack. The rhythm of human breathing will be translated into drawings and computer graphics, whilst interactive installations will respond to visitors’ voices and presence. Historical war photographs, in turn, will be used to generate what the original images do not show - plausible images, suspended between collective memory and simulation. You’ll also see a new language created by a neural network. It is an abstract system of signs that raises the question of whether machines can develop their own forms of communication.

Some projects look inside AI systems, whilst others test the limits of their effectiveness or use the technology to transform the human experience. What they have in common is the question of what is preserved, what disappears, and what only emerges as a result of algorithmic translation. And who, exactly, gives meaning to what we end up with at the end of this process - a human being or a machine?

In many ways, the exhibition allows visitors to experience the world as interpreted by algorithms - through images, sound, language, movement, light and even their own breathing. Rather than confining artificial intelligence to screens and interfaces, it presents it as part of a broader technological environment that is having an ever-greater influence on how we remember, create, categorise and interpret the world.

What to expect

The exhibition participants were Paweł Janicki, Dawid Konopka, Jakub Koźniewski, Andreas Lutz, Patrycja Maksylewicz, Agnieszka Rayss and David Sypniewski, Sefa Sagir and Anna Klimczak, the duo Varvara & Mar, and studio Dotdotdot. The curator was Rafał Kosewski, the texts are by Patrycja Strzetelska, and the exhibition was designed and built by Lotne Studio.

The exhibition filled the ground and first floors of the Centre’s conference centre. On Saturday and Sunday the festival’s experimental stations ran on the first floor, where, the museum said, visitors could test artificial intelligence programs and play go against a robot; on Sunday from 3:00 to 7:00 pm, in the Lektorium on the ground floor, visitors could create “memory patterns” with Bielik, a Polish language model (experimental stations, in Polish).

Tickets and time

• Admission: free - the museum stated this for the whole Przemiany Festival 2026.
• Hours: the exhibition was open on Friday 2 October 8:30-11:00 pm (opening night), Saturday 3 October 11:00 am-10:00 pm and Sunday 4 October 11:00 am-8:00 pm.
• Earlier on Friday: the museum announced a curator-led preview tour of the exhibition for 1:00-2:00 pm.
• Also during the festival: the museum announced that it would open “The Future Is Today”, part of its permanent exhibition, free of charge (Friday 8:30-11:00 pm, Saturday and Sunday 11:00 am-8:00 pm).
• Language: the museum said that some festival events would be interpreted into Polish Sign Language and English, with details given for each event. The exhibition text above is the museum’s own English.
• Dates: the heading of the museum’s English page read “October 3-5”, while the timetable on the same page and the Polish page both gave 2-4 October; we followed the timetable.

Events

• 2.10.2026, 1:00-2:00 pm - curator-led preview tour of the exhibition (exhibition page).
• 2.10.2026, 7:00-8:30 pm - festival opening in the Auditorium: the conversation “Is AI thinking for you?” with philosopher Tomasz Stawiszyński, artist Jakub Koźniewski, one of the exhibiting artists, and digital culture researcher Dr Monika Jabłońska, interpreted into Polish Sign Language and English (opening, in Polish).
• 2.10.2026, 8:30-11:00 pm - exhibition opening, with Andreas Lutz’s performance “Abstract Language Model (Live)” at 9:00 pm (opening, in Polish).

The museum published the full programme of debates, panels and workshops on the Przemiany Festival page.

After the show

On now at the Copernicus Science Centre:

• Mirrors. Between Illusion and Reality - a temporary exhibition built from exhibits by Switzerland’s Technorama which, by asking “Do you really see what you see?”, takes up the same question as “In algorithmic translation”: how faithful is the picture of the world we receive; in the same building until 22 November 2026.

Related exhibitions on now elsewhere in Warsaw:

• Adam Kozicki. War of Everyone Against Everyone - paintings which, the museum says, Kozicki makes without artificial intelligence, although their point of reference is a world dominated by digitally generated and distributed images - the other side of the question raised at the Copernicus Science Centre; at the Museum of Modern Art until 10 January 2027.
• START I - Means We Are Off! Polish Cameras - the history of Polish photographic technology, from 19th-century cameras with lenses by Adam Prażmowski to the prototype START I camera, for anyone the Copernicus show left curious about how machines make images; at the National Museum of Technology, with no closing date given by the museum.

Museum profile: Copernicus Science Centre.