IMPEC 2026 Conference > Artistic Performance

The IMPEC conference places particular emphasis on combining scientific presentations with artistic expression.

This is why each conference organized by IMPEC welcomes artists, offering them the opportunity to present their work linked with the thematic of the conference.

For this sixth edition, we are pleased to welcome the members of Blast for an interactive audiovisual performance on the theme of astroturfing.

Here is a presentation of their work:

“BLAST explores how online information can be manipulated and the consequences this may have on our opinions. Artificial intelligence (AI) lies at the heart of this issue, as it is a tool capable of generating massive amounts of content in a fraction of a second, making it easily exploitable for disinformation purposes.

Agence France-Presse (AFP) provides access to a continuous news feed, produced by journalists around the world. These journalists write dispatches—short, highly factual, neutral, and objective statements.

These dispatches closely resemble the so-called ‘prompts’ used to instruct AI systems to perform tasks.

In BLAST, a continuous stream of AFP dispatches is fed into several ideologically oriented AI models, which publish content live on social media under different pseudonyms. The audience can take part in the performance by verifying the accuracy of the information and commenting online on the generated images.

Post after post, comment after comment, we begin to understand the mechanisms of disinformation at work and the power they represent.”

Here is a more detailed outline of their performance:

• After defining what astroturfing is and the techniques it relies on, we provide a live demonstration involving the audience.
• We have developed a tool that enables mass posting on social media—in other words, allows us to engage in astroturfing ourselves (via a chat interface).
• We also demonstrate how easy it is to gain visibility on social platforms, particularly by relying on the “BrainRot” aesthetic, known for its ability to spread through platform algorithms.
• Starting from an AFP dispatch selected in collaboration with the audience, we produce a first semi-automated post on the Twitter network.
• As we have previously demonstrated the real influence these methods can have on our perception of reality, we invite the audience to use our tools to in turn impact the real world:
• Astroturfing good news—utopian fake news, positive stories, the kind of information we would like to hear on the next day’s television news

Below is a preview of their performance. The rights to this photograph belong to the members of Blast.