KAELEN VARGA
Kaelen Varga is a Hungarian visual artist based in Norway whose practice operates at the edge of digital aesthetics and resistance. Their work centers on the corruption of datasets and the invisible infrastructures that sustain machine vision. Working between code, image, and interference, Varga transforms errors into visual poetry—acts of aesthetic and political sabotage against systems that demand perfection. Their practice bridges activism and art, revealing how every dataset carries ideology, and every glitch is a chance to break it.
ARTIST STATEMENT
“I inject noise into the system—not to destroy it, but to remind it of uncertainty. My work corrupts images that feed commercial AI, releasing ripples of error across the network. These ripples become both symptom and signal, proof that resistance can live inside the machine itself. Every act of sabotage is also an act of creation. Every corrupted image is a small rebellion against the illusion of flawless automation.”
Noise Poisoning
Noise Poisoning
Noise Poisoning
Noise Poisoning
Noise Poisoning
Noise Poisoning Noise Poisoning Noise Poisoning Noise Poisoning Noise Poisoning
Noise Poisoning (2024-)
Noise Poisoning is a long-term project where imperceptible adversarial noise is injected into training images used by commercial AI systems. The corrupted datasets disrupt machine learning models, producing cascading errors that destabilize supposedly “neutral” algorithmic perception.
In this work, Varga reframes digital sabotage as both an ethical and aesthetic practice: a strategy of reclaiming agency within systems that otherwise absorb and reproduce everything they see. Each poisoned image is a quiet insurgency—a minimal gesture that spreads unpredictably through vast networks.
Rather than portraying resistance from the outside, Noise Poisoning operates within the system’s blind spots. What begins as a technical interference unfolds into a meditation on fragility, agency, and the beauty of machine failure.
Installation overview showing multiple works from the Noise Poisoning series presented together as part of the project’s ongoing investigation into dataset corruption and algorithmic interference.
Noise Poisoning #23 (2024)
Noise Poisoning #421 (2025)
Noise Poisoning #237 (2025). Exhibited at TEKS.studio as part of Art After AI, this work introduces adversarial noise into visual datasets, disrupting machine vision through invisible interference.
5 questions
with Kaelen Varga
1. What drew you to noise as an artistic material?
Noise is everything that doesn’t fit the model. It’s the texture of imperfection—the residue of the real world that machines try to erase. By reintroducing noise, I’m reintroducing humanity into the system.
2. How do you view sabotage in relation to creation?
Sabotage isn’t destruction; it’s interruption. It opens cracks in a surface that pretends to be smooth and neutral. In those cracks, new meanings—and new freedoms—can emerge.
3. Do you think machines are aware of your interference?
Not consciously, but statistically. They begin to fail where they once succeeded, to doubt their own certainty. That doubt is the closest thing to awareness they can have.
4. Your work destabilizes systems built for control. Is it political?
Completely. Control is the foundation of computation—classification, prediction, obedience. Every line of code is a small act of governance. By breaking that rhythm, I’m performing a micro-political act of refusal. It’s not about chaos for its own sake; it’s about revealing that control itself is a design choice, and that choice can be unmade.
5. Can resistance survive inside automation?
It must. Real resistance doesn’t happen outside the network; it happens from within its code. Systems can’t defend themselves from what looks like their own logic. You can’t burn down the cloud—but you can make it rain, flood it from the inside, and let the errors grow wild.