“Hybrid Layers” : an exhibition that explores social effects and the digital sphere in the contemporary world at ZKM in Karlsruhe until January 7th 2018

Until January 7th 2017, ZKM in Karlsruhe presents a new exhibition called “Hybrid Layers” and focuses his attention on a generation of artists who are engaging with the growing presence of the digital sphere and its effects on society. New perspectives on digital technologies, the Internet and social networks are shown, probing both virtual and physical manifestations of an artistic practice that is fundamentally influenced by the digital realm.

The pieces presented in the exhibition address current social, technological and aesthetic debates, and reflect on how comprehensively the digital realm influences every area of our daily life, our perception and our production of knowledge. The exhibition counts national and international artists such as Sophia Al Maria, Auto Italia South East, Marianne Forrest, Edward Gillman, Victoria Sin, Pablo Jones-Soler, Glass Beat, Riccardo Benassi, Enrico Boccioletti, Blunt x Skensved, Aleksandra Domanović, Ed Fornieles, Guan Xiao, Yngve Holen & Aedrhlsomrs Othryutupt Lauecehrofn.

The mediums of digital, algorithmic imaging and communication systems have now transformed all aspects of our world. Current research in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) has already shown us a glimpse of what fundamental changes technological progress will bring to our lives in the future. Through their installations, videos, performances and sculptures, the artists in this exhibition respond to this hybrid interfusing of the real and the digital and scrutinize how this situation influences our globally networked world.

»Hybrid Layers« thus explores the many aspects of what can be described as the »digital turn« or the »digital era«, which, since its emergence less than twenty years ago when the volume of digitally stored information surpassed that of analog information for the first time, has swiftly altered our thinking, actions and feelings. In the exhibition, the digital is the key, the a priori, to the disparate cultural and conceptual scenarios that are shown in the individual works.

While media art was longtime focused on translating the analogue world into the digital, artists today increasingly grapple with how the digital can be translated into the analogue world through the use of synthetic materials or innovative printing processes. The various perspectives on the digital that can be taken from the 22 artists represented in the exhibition are thus informed by a fundamental interest in exploring the hybrid layers of digital and physical realities in their multifaceted characteristics in a way that is dispassionate, expectant and critical.

More information about this exhibition here