A trans-disciplinary colloquium on the complex interrelations of animals and technology.

Networks have become a condition of social life. Their dynamic evolution constantly sets new standards and conventions and will continue to cause significant changes. The seminar will examine the foundations of network technologies and demonstrate possibilities and strategies to act with and within networks.

Within the seminar we visit research institutions that develop the visibilities of the future: at the Jülich Supercomputing Centre (featuring the fastest computer in Europe), Fraunhofer IGD and Fraunhofer FIT we get in touch with the technologies, methods and aesthetics of state-of-the-art research and meet some of the scientists behind these projects.

How to make a machine do more than it has been told? We examine theories, methods and concrete examples of how to use code and materials in order to get complex and even unexpected results “ex machina” from simple set-ups. Special attention will be paid to the interplay of programming and production and to the notion of feedback in technical systems.

Materials are a cetral topic of artistic practice, they are carrriers and media of ideas. In contrast, computers are thought to embody the immaterial. But with the advent of small pervasive computing devices that act in reactive environments, materiality unexpectedly gets a renaissance. The seminar teaches the basics of  programming and working with microcontrollers and then focuses on laboratory work and the creation and discussion of small experiments that probe the relation of code and materiality.