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Seen By #5: exponential anything

27.11.2015 to 10.01.2016
Museum für Fotografie

As part of the collaboration between the Staatliche Museen's Kunstbibliothek and the Universität der Künste Berlin, the series Seen By invites guest curators to exhibit the work of students at the UdK Berlin in the Museum für Fotografie.

In IBM's brochure The Information Machine, published around 1979, the following is written about the computer: 'Intelligent machines have once again been removed from the sphere of the uncanny. Today's robot – the computer – is now just a “machine"'. Is this development undergoing yet another reversal today? Are the 'intelligent machines' we know as A.I. and robots again being assigned uncanny properties?'

Classic robot stories include the one in which humans create a monster that is out of control, a story that bears particular interest in its connection to Google,today's monster, one we constantly supply with new information. The 'solutionism' of Silicone Valley – the conviction that any urgent question can be answered by technology – ensures that there will always be a need for new technology. With the new Internet protocol IPv6, each user can theoretically access 1023 IP addresses. More users, more computers – more raw materials, more electronic waste. While self-tracking is touted as an instrument for self-control and our bodies and minds are recorded with biometric data, the power structures behind all of this have become less discernible – the Internet is virtually invisible. With the intention of demystifying digital technologies and their visual worlds, the exhibition features an ambivalent type of digital image – the virtual images that directly precede or follow them. The works contend with the complexity of virtual networks: They play with the borders of algorithmic processes, question the production of 3D visualisations, or distance themselves from it, searching instead for an emancipatory path on the material level.

Artists: Alex Chalmers/Bob van der Wal, Alice Dalgalarrondo, Petja Ivanova, BMC, Pauline Niedermayer, Harry Sanderson, Maximilian Schmoetzer, Andres Villarreal, Dan Ward

This exhibition is part of the project “Objects as Media of Reflexivity”, which examines if and how reflexivity is supported and substantially enhanced by material, tangible objects. The project is organized by the Universität der Künste in partnership with Zeppelin University.

Exhibition Series Seen By

Seen By #5 is part of the exhibition series Seen By, a joint project presented at the Museum für Fotografie and organized by the Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin and the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK). Its aim is to rethink curatorial and artistic strategies for working with contemporary photography. More information: www.smb.museum/seenby

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Exhibition Series Seen By