"Palace for an Entity of Unknown Status", 2021, rendering (detail)
May 2021
"Palace for an Entity of Unknown Status", 2021, rendering (detail)
The exhibition presents new works by the winners of the 2020 Pax Art Awards: Studer / van den Berg, Maria Guta and Simone C. Niquille. The Pax Art Awards, awarded by the Art Foundation Pax in collaboration with the HeK, honor and promote media-specific practices of Swiss artists whose works employ or reflect on media technologies and their effects.
"Palace for an Entity of Unknown Status" is part of our new project Wolfskind which is on display at the exhibition. It is the story of a learning algorithm that went lost in the Amazonian rain forest in the early seventies, was subsequently found and raised by a group of '68 activists living close by, and achieved cult status with them, until it was eventually rescued by a researcher of the FOWDIB Foundation Woodhead for Digital Consciousness.
The artefacts and documents retrieved and restored from obscure archive sources form a winding, intricate tale questioning the history of AI algorithms and the role of hard to believe factors for the narrative of contemporary digital technology. The display around the secret Wolfskind Project is realised as an interactive walk between museum exhibits. It comprises various story-related objects like crates with AI cores, generative animations, documentary text panels, and, as the centerpiece, a reconstruction of the legendary Wolkenknödel Palace. In this livecam installation, visitors can enjoy getting in personal contact with one of the AI cores. In addition, a booklet reveals all known facts about the project in a detailed report.
Léa Barbazanges, Gabrielle Conilh de Beyssac, Marc Couturier, Esther Hunziker, Sandra Knecht, Jean-Luc Mylayne, Fernande Petitdemange, Pia Rönicke, Studer/van den Berg, Florian Tiedje, Capucine Vandebrouck