Data Loam: Sometimes Hard, Usually Soft (the future of knowledge systems) is the culmination of a major two year research grant bringing together over 20 artists, philosophers, computing engineers, crypto-economists, block-chain speculations, game theorists and a range of cyberneticists information and library science scholars in order to re-think the current apocalyptic approach to the impact of the digital, machine learning and the internet of 'things'. It takes as its starting point that one must re-invigorate science, and with it certain forms of binaric logics, with 'old fashioned' alchemies of sense, of art and of the humanities. The central piece of the book develops from an international exhibition of the same name held in Vienna Feb-Mar 2019. Taking its cues from the artists involved, the book spiders out to include analytic repositioning of the archive, the museum, fine art practice(s), and distributed forms of intelligence.