Let’s take a closer look at Suzanne Treister’s project Hexen 2.0
During a residency in the Texan desert in 2009, artist Suzanne Treister began exploring the links between post-war scientific research and our modern digital lives. Her project HEXEN 2.0 connects the rise of cybernetics in the mid-twentieth century with today’s online world of social media, surveillance, and information sharing.
Cybernetics was a new science developed after the Second World War to understand how systems, whether machines, humans, or societies, could regulate themselves through feedback loops (how a thermostat adjusts temperature based on data, or people change their behaviour in response to online feedback). These ideas influenced early computing and, later, the design of the internet.
Web 2.0 describes the shift from early, static websites to interactive online platforms such as social media. Instead of simply reading information, users now create and respond to it, forming constant cycles of feedback. This interactivity has made the web more connected, but also more open to surveillance and manipulation.
At the heart of HEXEN 2.0 are the Macy Conferences (1946–1953), a series of meetings where scientists, psychologists, and mathematicians came together to study how the human mind works. Their aim was to find shared patterns between people, machines, and communication systems, ideas that helped shape both computer science and social theory.
Tarot decks have been used for centuries as tools for reflection and insight, with each card representing archetypes, human experiences, and possible outcomes. In HEXEN 2.0, Treister uses a 78-card Tarot deck to map ideas from her research, linking cybernetics, social systems, and historical figures, so that the cards become a way to explore past influences and imagine alternative futures.
Through intricate diagrams, Tarot-inspired artworks, photo-text portraits, and video, Treister maps how these scientific ambitions, political agendas, and countercultural movements have evolved over time. She highlights how feedback loops and systems of communication and technology can both empower people and be used for surveillance or social control. Treister also draws on philosophy and science fiction to imagine how technology might shape our futures, for better or worse.
Blending fact and speculation, HEXEN 2.0 invites viewers to reflect on how the digital systems we rely on every day were first imagined, and to consider what kind of world they might create next.
“Such hypotheses may be better suited for manipulation and control than they are for love and understanding” – Steve J. Heims, 1991, on Cybernetics.
Suzanne Treister: Prophetic Dreaming is on show until 12 April 2026. Bring this guide with you to help decipher the tarot cards.