Open Codes

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.