Decoding the Black Box

Anonymous, Aram Bartholl, James Bridle, Adam Harvey, Femke Herregraven, Jonas Lund, !Mediengruppe Bitnik, Metahaven, Chino Moya, Olsen, Mimi Onuoha, Evan Roth, Eryk Salvaggio

27.01.24-16.06.24

With digital technologies permeating every aspect of our lives, reality increasingly becomes a predictable entity in which everything and everyone evaporates into information. The flood of information empties itself into the World Wide Web’s image flood that drowns us on the displays of our end devices, living a seemingly uncontrollable life of its own.

Whether smart phone, smart home, social software, bonus, navigation, traffic, or surveillance system – they have one thing in common: All of them collect personal information in the form of Big Data. The private sphere is thus dissolving and becoming transparent, while the processes triggered by these technologies remain opaque and hidden.

The artists gathered in the exhibition Decoding the Black Box shed light on the processes that take place in our end devices, the black boxes. They reveal the workings of digital technologies and at the same time visualise the effects they have on our perception of reality. While the capitalist and power-political structures of the internet and the virtual image economy are made transparent, the artists envision counter-designs for a decentralized and democratic use of technologies.

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