“We are all inside this thing—but how?” This book explores 21st-century art’s reckonings with the technosphere. Outlining the concept of encryption that underlies this infrastructural condition, Samman explores motifs of confinement, capture and burial, as well as access and exclusion from secured domains. Poetics of Encryption excavates the art of our times in relation to these motifs, as it quests through caves, cables, codes, satellites and icons. Toggling between enlightened concern and occult dreaming, it surveys a counterintuitive aesthetic of the interface.
Nadim Samman (born 1980) is Curator for the Digital Sphere at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin. In 2019 he was First Prize recipient of the International Award for Art Criticism (IAAC). Major curatorial projects included the 4th Marrakech Biennale (2012), the 5th Moscow Biennale for Young Art (2015) and the 1st Antarctic Biennale (2017).
Tokyo, Mishuku, JPN
Vienna, Neubau, AUT
Egor Kraft – artist-researcher, founder
Anna Kraft – researcher, director
mail/at/kraft.studio
Tokyo, Mishuku, JPN
Vienna, Neubau, AUT
Egor Kraft – artist-researcher, founder
Anna Kraft – researcher, director
#ReverseArchaeology #SyntheticHistories #Cognitecture #AIsthetics #Engistemics
Initiated in 2017, ongoing.
Marble, polyamide, machine learning algorithms, custom software, original dataset, multichannel video installation.
A critical and technical exploration of the capacities of AI models to reconstruct missing fragments of objects from classical antiquity and generate synthetic historical documents carved in stone. This work questions the epistemological qualities of AI-accelerated historiography, akin to 'reverse archaeology'.
#Infodemics #Infollution #Knowlegistics #EngineeredTruth
Initiated in 2011, ongoing.
5-channel video installation; HD film; website: thenewcolor.net; book, edition of 50.
An online mystification concerning a parascientific breakthrough discovery of a never-before-seen colour. The digital myth took the form of a fictitious company's website, video adverts & mockumentary interviews to become a viral sensation attracting mass attention online.