[Lisbon AI Week 2025] CAPTCHURED: Training Sets for Refusal

​CAPTCHA is a type of security test used in computing to determine whether the user click clack clocking is human or a bot. CAPTCHAs act as gatekeepers, deciding who gets access based on specific criteria, usually visual recognition skills. This mirrors societal rules, where institutions define who is allowed to participate based on compliance with often invisible norms.

​Instead of clicking through boxes to prove we’re human, what if we could invent our own tests of belonging? CAPTCHURED is partly walking, partly making participatory workshop. Participants will gather images from the surrounding environment to form personal datasets, then transform these into CAPTCHAs that resist recognition. The resulting works are invited to contribute to CAPTCHURED, a participatory artwork and growing archive of subversive puzzles that resist verification. Come walk, come make, come trouble the algorithmic gaze. 🐸

​Important ⚠️

​Capacity is limited to around 10 people. If you are unable to attend or change your mind, please let us know so we can pass your place to the next person.

​If you are in a position where you cannot afford a ticket but would love to participate, you can claim one of 3 stipends available for this workshop.

​Together we’re gonna ponder:

​1. What does access mean when machines decide who gets in?
2. Who is seen, mistranslated, or filtered out by machines?
3. Who gets to say what makes someone human?

​What are we gonna do?

• ​reflect on our own experiences of being verified / surveilled / excluded / filtered by digital systems

• ​30-minute walk outside in the neighbourhood while creating our own dataset by collecting weird signals, tldr: taking pictures in the wild

• ​play with CAPTCHAs as a form of language and power structure through the web tool specifically developed for this workshop

• ​archive and contribute visual squares into the ongoing CAPTCHURED artwork

​What are we gonna unlearn?

​In this workshop, we are unlearning the neutrality of CAPTCHA, which reduces complex identities and ethical nuances to yes/no answers, the inevitability of algorithmic borders, and the notion that machines should define what it means to be human.

​For whom?

​The workshop is open to curious individuals of all genders, backgrounds, and fields. No prior knowledge of AI or hardcore tech is required. In fact, it is enough if they have ever used the internet for more than 5 minutes in their lives.

​Tools

​smartphone with a functional camera

​Outputs

• ​archive of community-made CAPTCHAs, literally tons of CAPTCHAs

• ​zine compiling all our messy creations & findings about what it means and how it feels to be a human

• ​participatory artwork / web-based interactive piece

​Institute of Machine Unlearning

​The Institute of Machine Unlearning is a para-academic performative infrastructure for collective unlearning, feral pedagogy & serious play. Practicing the weird third thing, between AI hype and doomerism, in a messy middle space of participatory inquiry through participatory workshops, strange tools and DIY publishing.