Colossal Cave Adventure — The Movie

Animation, 2022
With Thomas Hawranke

The project deals with one of the first text-based adventure games in computer game history. Colossal Cave Adventure was developed by Will Crowther in 1976 and is based on the spatial presence of Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. Crowther’s game completely avoids a visual representation of the cave – instead, text input and text response shape the cave in the player’s individual perception. The AI-based animated film is approximately 55 minutes long. The camera constantly moves downwards, digging through geological layers and exposing new cave spaces again and again. Every eight seconds, the AI system receives a new textual description. These descriptions are taken from the 1976 source code of the game, which contains a total of 379 inputs ranging from narrative descriptions of nature, to jargon from the vocabulary of speleologists, to single words meaning an object, a compass direction, or an exclamation.

Continue reading

KITeGG: BMBF Project on Design & AI

Making AI Tangible and Comprehensible: Connecting Technology and Society Through Design – KITeGG

Since December 2021, KISD is part of a four-year BMBF project on design and artificial intelligence. The aim of the project is to establish a strong network of design departments and universities in order to sustainably anchor the teaching of AI topics and methods in the entire field of design.

Continue reading

Hill Climbing

Software bot, 2021

Hill Climbing is a bot walking through Google StreetView that always goes up, following the direction of the steepest incline. As a software bot, the work performs autonomously, creating an open-ended visual meditation on human and machine agency, artificial intelligence and optimization, and the landscapes and operational images of the measured globe.

Continue reading

Technology Studio

The Technology Studio at SFAI is an interdisciplinary place for all art projects dealing with technology. It provides infrastructure for work involving electronics and prototyping, multi-channel sound, interaction, and virtual reality.

Continue reading

Unauthorized SFMOMA Show

Intervention, 2017
In cooperation with Enar de Dios Rodríguez and Ana María Montenegro Jaramillo

Unauthorized SFMOMA Show was a series of solo shows that took place within SFMOMA’s public spaces from April 6th – July 2nd on a rotating basis, without the consent or knowledge of the institution. The only requirement to visit an Unauthorized SFMOMA Show was to be physically present at SFMOMA and have access to a device connected to the Internet.

Continue reading

Where have you been?

Installation, 2016

“Where have you been?” is an installation investigating the personal data leaked by networked mobile phones. It consists of a projection displaying seemingly random scenes from Google StreetView. These scenes, however, depict places members of the audience have visited in the past: a frequently used airport, a favorite café, or the own front yard.

Continue reading

Signal to Noise

Installation, 2014
In cooperation with Tincuta Heinzel

“Signal to Noise” is a radio based audio installation dealing with the concreteness of ideological discourses and the imaginary of the “Other”. Using two FM radio transmitters and a number of mobile radio receivers, the project creates a volatile acoustic space in which two concurring voices and ideologies compete by broadcasting on the same frequency. Carrying mobile radios, listeners permanently enact an ever-changing soundscape by moving through the space in which both transmitters interfere.

Continue reading

Solar Wind Aeroscope

Installation, 2014
In cooperation with Jonas Hansen

The Solar Wind Aeroscope is an artistic instrument dealing with atmospheric conditions that depend on “space weather:” a storm of electromagnetic particles from the sun that constantly affects our atmosphere. It uses an Internet connection (in the gallery) or a radio receiver (in the wild) to tap into a global network of amateur HAM-radio stations known as WSPRnet. Through this network, the Aeroscope can “see” the atmospheric conditions caused by the solar wind. Continue reading