I went to see a workshop on hacking file formats with Mat Hill, a creative coding friend who is also involved in the London Permacomputing Club.

The workshop was part of the programme for Does Cloud Compute (ever) Precipitate? organised by the Phreaking Collective, a recently formed London-based group of computational artists.

At the workshop we started by looking at histories and cultures of different numbering systems, and how binary works and how it was used for memory storage on computers. We then considered: what makes a collection of 1s and 0s become text, images, sound or video? The answer is file formats - conventions for indicating how bits and bytes should be displayed.

To explore this together, Mat shared a Python script which he had made - which turns the same string of numbers into a text file (.txt), an image (.bmp) and a sound (.wav). Then we turned to a hands-on exercise to modify how the string of numbers was generated to make different kinds of sonic and visual outputs. It was fun to hear the room filling with what sounded like a gently chaotic, primordial 8-beat soup.

The workshop was intended to playfully open up taken-for-granted media archaeological layers of standardisation and conventionalisation about how software works, what files are and what computers do with them.

As well as considering the politics of software standards (“what standards are, who defines them, who agrees on them”) - the workshop was an invitation to creative coders to critically engage with these layers. As Mat put it in the conclusion, “if you create a file format, you can’t remove the ability to hack it”.

After the workshop I saw the exhibition which featured work from Yunzhi / Melissa Li, Xach Hill, Rizq Yazed, Jack Jessé, Lyra Robinson, Phoenix Isla Kea, Jasmine Broadhurst, Nikos Antonio Kourous Vázquez, David Lazãr, Robin Leverton and Dylan Morris.

Later I caught Terence Broad sharing his work on “AI as Material” and experiments with “expressive manipulation of generative neural networks”.

About the workshop:

Why are file formats? are they real? what??? Let’s learn what file formats really are, where they came from, and why they make us suffer. We will start with an intro to Permacomputing, and how speculative art projects could save engineering! Then, we will learn just enough computer science to be dangerous. With these new skills, we can explore the surprisingly philosophical worlds of bytebeats, generative image-making, and Unicode-art. By the end, you will wonder why you ever relied on software to do things for you, and uninstall chatGPT forever!!!

About the collective:

The Phreaking Collective is a London-based group of emerging computational artists working across code, sculpture, sound, installation, and digital media. Formed in 2025, the collective takes its name from phreaking, a term initially used to describe the subversive practice of hacking telephone systems in the 1960s and 70s. Drawing from this lineage of creative mischief and network disruption, the Phreaking Collective reclaims the term as a gesture toward experimentation, resistance, and intimacy within digital systems.

About the exhibition:

Does Cloud Compute (ever) Precipitate?

This show explores the hidden infrastructures that shape our lives, bringing materiality to the ethereal. It explores our relationship with the monoliths that are waking up, the environmental strain, the invisible human labour, and the worries of pooled resources in an unreturning atmosphere. Working across installations, sound works, generative systems and computational artwork, the exhibition examines the quiet romance in technological convenience.

The Cloud, an unseen network of servers, energy and labour - is made tangible, visible and audible. The works confront the vast systems that silently maintain our lives, datacenters that feed on our energy and attention and the dependent relationship we have, the systems behind each upload, generation and stream.

Running alongside the two week show is a series of talks, workshops, discussions, film screenings and performances where visitors are invited to look deeper into the unsung systems shaping our lives, and reflect on the strange romance and hidden dependencies that define our connection to the cloud.