In an era shaped by ecological collapse, technological displacement, and social fragmentation, Zeitgeist25 investigates digital art as a surface onto which collective anxiety is projected. A “melancholic” machine —left behind after humanity’s disappearance— grapples with a longing embedded in its own code. Drawing on glitch aesthetics, generative AI, and conceptual dramaturgy, the work reframes system errors and technical commands as expressive gestures of vulnerability, persistence, and failure. Unfolding across four poetic acts, each section traces the machine’s attempt to “comprehend” the absence of its creators and to situate itself within a world devoid of human reference. Rather than attributing genuine emotion to artificial intelligence, simulated longing operates as a theatrical device, exposing emotional projections, contemporary fears, and cultural tensions. By staging collapse, the work becomes both critique and catharsis: a document of the 2025 zeitgeist, where the boundaries between system and soul, error and expression, simulation and sincerity begin to blur, confronting the viewer with their own technological fragility.
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Rui Filipe Antunes (2026) studied this question.
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