Seasons of Media Arts

A city in keeping with the times is subject to constant—if invisible—change as thousands of data streams are created, captured, and distributed every day. The rise of the “smart city” phenomenon raises certain questions: How can we influence the urban landscape through new digital technologies, data streams, and information? What happens to all the data collected in our smart cities by sensors and smart technologies? How can open data become a common resource?

Starting in 2019, the ZKM | Karlsruhe is organizing the annual “Seasons of Media Arts” project in collaboration with the Office of Cultural Affairs of the city of Karlsruhe and various local initiatives. Within the “Seasons of Media Arts” framework, digital and/or data-related art installations addressing the issue of public access to data and the possibilities of a “smart city” will be scattered throughout the city’s urban space.

The works present an idea of a city in which technology is not used primarily to collect data about residents for commercial or regulatory ends, but to enable citizen participation and transparency in political decision-making processes. The virtual urban space created is characterized by interaction and knowledge transfer, contributing to the establishment of a “digitally connected city” that foregrounds inhabitants’ digital self-determination. Thus the significance of large datasets, whether visualized in formats such as graphs or processed by adversarial neural networks, will be emphasized via video works as well as streamed lectures and performances on public screens. Public notices and QR codes on unappreciated everyday artifacts of public space—connecting them to a digital space that hints at a post-apocalyptic scenario—subtly subvert the phenomenon of “smartness” in urban areas.

As a continuation of the education and learning program of the recent “Open Codes” exhibition at the ZKM, various project partners will offer workshop series. In association with local groups and in collaboration with the ZKM, internationally active artists will transform the city into a place of participative visions within the framework of “Seasons of Media Arts.”

“Seasons of Media Arts” is part of Karlsruhe’s action plan to support its application for the title City of Media Arts in the UNESCO Creative City Network. It was conceived by Peter Weibel, and is curated by Peter Weibel and Lívia Nolasco-Rózsás together with Blanca Giménez and Olga Timurgalieva.

The artists and other contributors are: Zach Blas, Felipe Castelblanco, Ursula Damm, Brendan Dawes, Greg Dunn, Julie Freeman, Sarah Friend, Johan Grimonprez, Adam Harvey, Ria Hinken, Norimichi Hirakawa, Albrecht Kim, Olga Kisseleva, Aaron Koblin, Gene Kogan, Ignas Krunglevicius, Sey Min, OK Lab Karlsruhe, Zach Lieberman, Bernd Lintermann, DK Osseo-Asare & Yasmine Abbas (Aglogboshie Makerspace Platform), Dani Ploeger, Polakvanbekkum (Esther Polak and Ivar van Bekklum), David O’Reilly, Tabita Rezaire, Anna Ridler, Richard Schaffranek, Stanza, Suzanne Treister, Urban Data Patterns, Peter Weibel, Eyal Weizman, Dan Wilcox, Manfred Wolff-Plottegg, Liam Young, and Zeitguised.