During the web 2.0 stage of the internet, the rise of new social media apps made us believe in a more democratic and accessible era for artists and creatives. The early days of MySpace, Soundcloud, YouTube, Bandcamp, Instagram, etc. felt empowering. New possibilities arose to talk directly to an audience, bypassing the traditional gatekeepers. About twenty years later, we seem to live in a new gatekeeping dystopia, where the algorithms of Instagram, Tiktok, and Spotify determine which artistic expressions reach an audience and which don't. As if that was not already bad enough, we know since 2025 that those big tech monopolies don't see a problem in aligning themselves with authoritarian and fascist politics.

There is an increased interest in alternatives for social interaction on the internet. However, decentralized technology like Mastodon or Bluesky doesn't seem to be the perfect fit for a large scale migration of artists off of Instagram, Tiktok and the like. On the other hand, internet protocols like atproto give us the tools to quite quickly build something new that fits our needs much more.

During this workshop, we want to brainstorm about a new artistic interpretation of social media, where power balances are kept in check and creativity can thrive. What is missing for artists in the current interpretations by Bluesky, Flashes, Mastodon, Instagram, Tiktok, etc.? Can we get much more creative with the formats, while at the same time keep it accessible for a broad audience? How can we organize internationally to build a new app experience that amazes people and convinces them to leave the centralized platforms?

The workshop facilitator, Hilke, is both a musician and a software developer, and emerged herself deeply into decentralized systems, mainly atproto. She is currently doing an artistic research on the crossroads between music and technology, and has a vision to build a new app for the community of musicians in particular, and artists in general. Inspired by community projects like Blacksky, she doesn't want to build only for herself, but in community with other artists. She wants to test some ideas of her own with the workshop participants and gather new ones. One of the floating ideas is to combine a more traditional social media feed with an 'artist in in-app residence' program, where there is much more room for creativity and deep dives into the universe of a particular artist. One of the outcomes of the workshop could be to gather a first batch of artist in residence candidates, which would become the seed of an ever-growing community outreach.

A technical background is not needed for the workshop. We are mainly looking for creative input from artists and willingness to start a new, creative movement.