Open Codes
Open Codes. The World as a Field of Data
The World as a Field of Data
Fri, October 20, 2017 – Sun, June 02, 2019

Free admission, free fruit, free drinks, free flow of ideas, free WLAN, free power – the remarkable education experiment continues!

The exhibition project »Open Codes« enters its second round! While the first phase »Open Codes. Living in Digital Worlds« presented many varied examples of codes, from Morse code to genetic code, the second phase »Open Codes. The World as a Field of Data« focuses on a world that is increasingly driven by data.

We live in a world that is not solely generated, driven, and controlled by things, words, and images, but above all by data. A vast number of electronic interfaces, like smartphones, computers, TVs, and data displays, accompany us 24/7. Fields of Data are indispensable and omnipresent

Living in digital worlds means increasingly a life spent in a programed, smart environment, a so-called »scripted reality.« The script is dictated in part by sensors, which provide information about the state of reality around us. The data from the sensors is processed by algorithms, which steer us through the world as though through a field of data. For the world we live in is more and more an artificial, human-made data world.

The large-scale installation »The World as a Field of Data« which awaits you in ZKM’s Atrium 8, takes up this topic. A »data cloud« of around 40 monitors shows the vast number of electronic interfaces, like smartphones, computers, TVs, and digital data screens that accompany us in everyday life: at the airport or train station, at the stock exchange and in the bank, in the office and in the home, in the hospital or in the medical practice.

»The second edition of Open Codes will show you this new world of fields of data in an abundance of examples. It opens to us a new horizon for humankind: transhumanism built on artificial intelligence.«

Peter Weibel, artistic-scientific director of the ZKM and curator of the exhibition

The Museum as a Thinking Space and Assembly

The second phase of the exhibition will also be accompanied by an extensive supporting program with lectures, conferences, symposia, workshops and film screenings. We invite visitors to experience the museum as a thinking space, as co-working space and as an assembly, as a new form of congregating to exchange and acquire knowledge, and a new form of collaborating.

Floor Plan

Site map of the exhibition showing the location of the art works.

Exhibition Brochure

Further information on »Open Codes« can be found in the exhibition brochure »Open Codes. Living in Digital Worlds«.

Credits
Exhibitions team

Nathalia Fuchs, external advisor
Christian Lölkes, scientific advisor
Franz Pichler, external advisor

Organization / Institution
ZKM | Center for Art and Media

Accompanying program

Supported by