Lutz Dammbeck
Seek II
2007
- Artist / Artist group
- Lutz Dammbeck
- Title
- Seek II
- Year
- 2007
- Category
- Installation
- Computer-based
- Material / Technique
- installation, archives
- Dimensions / Duration
- installation dimensions variable
- Collection
- ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe
- Description
- Born in Leipzig, painter, graphic artist and filmmaker Lutz Dammbeck began working with computers, particularly their history, in 1999. The reason for this was his appointment to the Dresden University of Fine Arts, where he set up a masterclass for "New Media". The work "Seek II", created in 2007, is a reproduction of the experimental arrangement "Seek", which was conceived by a group of students at the M.I.T. in 1970. After more than 35 years, Lutz Dammbeck and a team have taken up this idea again. This project was driven by curiosity about a perspective changed by time and the desire to visualise fields of science otherwise dominated by numbers. As part of this work, he released a three-part video documentary showing the construction of the project, an exhibition and the taxidermy of a gerbil that died during the exhibition. The work exhibited at the ZKM is a version renewed in 2021, in which Lutz Dammbeck and his team "Seek II" have further approximated the original work on the M.I.T. The cybernetic installation consists of a metal cube city enclosed in glass and inhabited by Mongolian gerbils. Their habitat is based on a specific floor plan, but the mice act creatively by reshaping their habitat, with their behaviour being evaluated by specially developed computer software. The machine attempts to make generally valid predictions about the arbitrary future behaviour of the mice so that the robotic arm, which hovers over the city, can restore the original layout and proactively counteract the behaviour of the mice. With his artistic work, Lutz Dammbeck manages to suggest a dystopian future in which humans can be used as substitutes for the mice.
Author
Lara
Mainzer