UNINVITED
Nye Thompson & UBERMORGEN

Pressrelease

In a globalized society where ostensive ideology and digital technology divide the world into two factions – the observers and the observed, Nye Thomson and UBERMORGEN get at the core of the digital world in order to engender a new „form of life” which continuously evolves by using AI. Described by the artists as a „A radically new creature looking at the world and nothing makes sense, while hearing the universe through millions of hallucinogenic virally abused sensors”, UNINVITED is an autonomous entity projected in such a way as to pervade the CCTV systems all around the world so as to capture images and transform them into a horror film where violence, anxiety and paranoia become leading actors and such entities as the Machines, become producers.

UNINVITED is an art project which can be understood as a horror film, web experience and an art installation. The ElectroPutere Gallery space will function as an AI avatar where a mechatronic „Monster”, connected to a self-evolving organism inside a network (botnet), runs through the CCTV networks in the entire world to collect images which are afterwards processed and projected as a film within the gallery space. It is a horror film that speaks about what happens when the surveillance networks and the AI devices configure a crazy world of „Machines”.

Nye Thompson is an artist turned software designer turned artist. She creates data-gathering software systems to explore new technology paradigms, and has a particular interest in the machinic gaze and its underlying power dynamics. She has exhibited internationally including Tate Modern, The Barbican, The V&A, ZKM Karlsruhe, Ars Electronica and The Lowry. Her first solo show Backdoored.io – described by C4 News as „too shocking to broadcast” – became global clickbait and triggered an international government complaint. Her work has been featured on BBC, C4, CNN, the Guardian and Wired, and she was a guest presenter on BBC Radio 4’s ‘The Art of Now: Surveillance’. She has been called „the new Big Brother” (Vogue) and „a contemporary Jacques Cousteau” (Bob & Roberta Smith). She has received several Arts Council England and British Council awards. She was a Lumen Prize finalist in 2018 & 2019, and shortlisted for the 2019 Rapoport Award for Women in Art and Technology. Her work was recently acquired for the V&A Museum’s permanent collection.

UBERMORGEN (AT/CH/US) is an artist duo founded 1995 in Vienna by lizvlx & Hans Bernhard. Part of the Net.Art avant-garde of the 1990s and 2000s digital actionism & concept art. UBERMORGEN celebrates a radical-subversive approach to data & matter. UBERMORGEN owns 175 websites/domains and they have been featured in 3000+ news reports & reviews. CNN called them „Maverick Austrian Business People”, NY Times called them ‘simply brilliant’. UBERMORGEN was featured at Centre Pompidou, MoMA/PS1, Sydney Biennale, MACBA Barcelona, New Museum New York, SFMoma, ICC Tokyo, Gwangju Biennale, Serpentine Galleries, Whitney Museum. Main influences: Rammstein, Samantha Fox, XXXTentacion and Pixibücher, Olanzapine & LSD, Kentucky Fried Chicken’s Coconut Shrimp Deluxe & Viennese Actionism. UBERMORGEN talks at international conferences, museums and symposia and they hold the professorship for Networks at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne.

Credits:

By Nye Thompson & UBERMORGEN

With:

Composer/sound designer: Thom Kubli

Project Consultant: Adrian Bojenoiu

Branding & Web Team: Studio Hyte

Industrial Design & Monster Prototype: Tareg Al-Zamel

Photography & videography: Geoff Titley

Software architecture & machine learning: Richard Hopkirk & Martin Dixon

Mechatronics: Modulab Bucharest

CCTV visual prototypes: Alexander Zenker

Generously supported by:Administration of the National Cultural Fund / Romania, Arts Council England, British Council, City of Vienna, Federal Chancellery of Austria, Furtherfield, Haringey Council, OKdo, Pro Helvetia

Parteners: Revista ARTA, Scena9