OPEN CALL: Viable Data Remote Residency

The ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, the High Performance Computing Center Stuttgart (HLRS) and the Media Solution Center Baden-Württemberg call on international media artists and scientists to submit innovative collaborative project proposals to apply for a one-month remote residency.

The project proposals should deal with adaptive systems or systemic processes in nature, e.g. biomimetic behaviors, based on big data sets. This should result in generative visualizations that investigate these complex processes in a creative way.

To participate in the call for proposals, artists/scientists must have experience in working with GPU-accelerated libraries for AI (artificial intelligence) and HPC (high performance computing) on Linux-based systems. After a technical introduction by the HLRS team, the artists/scientists will have the unique opportunity to access a dedicated infrastructure of the HLRS (a special HPC cluster) in order to independently perform (AI-based) computational operations on at least 10 nodes (each with at least one GPU) during the remote residency. The artists/scientists themselves are responsible for the data sets used, their pre- and post-processing, as well as the modeling of the processes.

The remote residency will take place over a period of approximately one month between the beginning of June and the end of August 2021, which will be agreed upon between the partner institutions and the artists/scientists. As a result of the remote residency, a digital visual artwork is to be created, which will be presented in the context of an international conference planned for September 2021 at HLRS, and possibly from the end of November in the context of the ZKM exhibition »BioMedia«.

Financial framework

Collaborative submissions by duos of scientists and artists can be considered for a total grant amount of 4.000€. The selected artists/scientists will each receive a stipend. The stipend amounts to 2.000€ and is limited to one month. An on-site stay is not planned in each case.

Conditions of participation

The following is required for submission:

1. short summary of the project idea (max. 1000 characters incl. spaces)

2. short biography (max. 1000 characters incl. spaces) and contact details

3. sketch of the technical experimental setup (max. 1000 characters each incl. spaces):

3.1 Input: description of the data sets

3.2 Process: description of the processing steps

3.3 output: description of the visualization strategy

4. evidence of experience with GPU-accelerated libraries for AI and HPC (Linux-based).

Applications in English can be sent by email to viable-data@zkm.de with the email subject »Viable Data Remote Residency, Proposal, Last Name« in a PDF file of up to 5 MB by May 30, 2021 11:59PM. Please upload any accompanying audio, images, and video online to a file hosting service of your choice and include the non-expiring download link in your application email. If you have any questions, please contact viable-data@zkm.de.

The remote artist-in-residence program »Viable Data Remote Residency« takes place in cooperation between the CreativeLAB at the Research and Creation Center for eCulture of the Media Solution Center Baden-Württemberg, the High Performance Computing Center Stuttgart (HLRS) and the ZKM | Hertz-Lab.