“Die Gedanken sind frei” (The Thoughts are Free) – a German folk song that has been sung many times as an expression of resistance to oppression. The author and composer are unknown. Does the song take on a new meaning when it comes from the “mouth” of an artificial intelligence? What new verses would the intelligence invent in “its sense”? I let ChatGPT write new verses for this thought experiment. Only the first and last verses are identical to the traditional song. The lip-sync animation was also done with the help of artificial intelligence.
Birth – growth – reproduction – death. The eternal cycle of life. But all the efforts of modern science are aimed at slowing down or even stopping this cycle: fewer illnesses, vitality into old age, eternal youth, … is this paradise?
Deep Paradise @ St.Konrad / Augsburg-Bärenkeller, 2023, video installation with sound, 6:07 min
The apple was and is highly symbolic in many cultures: be it as a symbol of eternal youth, eternal life, love, fertility, paradise and the fall of mankind.
In this installation, a golden apple floats in the air like a fixed star. Familiar places are reflected on its shiny surface (in the Bärenkeller district of Augsburg). How are people doing there and in the world?
In contrast, the two-dimensional portraits in this landscape appear strange. Who are these people? The Holy Family? Our neighbours? They never existed, but are the outputs of an artificial intelligence. We live in a time of upheaval. New technologies give us the feeling that we are increasingly losing control over truth and lies, over good and evil. Is this paradise on earth?
The apple hides a secret inside, because there is a small star made up of 5 seeds. It reminds us that our actions determine whether we come a little closer to “paradise on earth”.
The site-specific video installation refers to the real space: church, district, city… by showing it as a digital mirror image, which in turn is reflected by the shiny surface of the golden apple. A kind of visual recursion in which reality and fiction, analog and digital merge.
Sandbox is on the one hand a sandy playground for children, on the other hand a term originating from software development for an “isolated area within which any action has no effect on the external environment”. (Wikipedia)
We are sitting in a large virtual sandbox that is anything but isolated. There are many toys in it that we don’t know what they are for. And new ones are added every day. We explore them playfully and in the process we come up with ideas – good or bad….
One such toy is Dall-e 2, one of the most celebrated AIs of 2022, which can create realistic images and even artwork from a text-based description in natural language. This creative act is new and unique, and must be judged as the next stage of evolution.
The works Dall-e generates are almost perfect, and yet she generates strangely disturbing outputs in response to seemingly innocuous keywords. It begs the question, is this the toy we would give our children?
Since the invention of the internet and social media in particular, our society has found itself in parallel realities: the analog, physical world and the virtual one. There, we are increasingly confronted with fake people and fake stories that have been perfected with the help of artificial intelligence. How can we counter a digital space that is dehumanized in every respect?
In this work, I bring together two things that don’t belong together: the Polaroid and the AI-generated fake human. For a long time, Polaroids embodied authenticity and uniqueness, because each photo was unique and captured a real moment in all its imperfection. But the scenes here, which look like baroque vanitas motifs, never existed. And yet the Polaroid as a medium lends this work something credible and truthful.
In this constellation, the vanitas idea “Remember that you are mortal” is given a surprising twist, which could come from the “mouth” of an artificial intelligence: “Remember that you are obsolet”.
2023, Video with Sound, Animation, 5:17 min, Chat history from 6.02.2023
What ChatGPT has to say about the “Uncanny Valley”.
What or who is ChatGPT? I asked “him” this question, to which “he” replied the following:
“I am an artificial intelligence model trained by OpenAI. My answers are based on the information I recorded during my training process. During this training, I was fed an enormous amount of text from a variety of sources, including books, journal articles, news reports and scientific studies. In this way I was able to develop a broad understanding of many different topics and areas of expertise(…). However, it is important to note that I am not able to gather my own experience and that my answers may not always be complete or 100% accurate. My answers should always be used as a source of information and not as definitive expert advice.”
2023, Video with Sound, Animation, 5:36 min, and 15 Polaroids
Sandbox is on the one hand a sandy playground for children, on the other hand a term originating from software development for an “isolated area within which any action has no effect on the external environment”. (Wikipedia)
We are sitting in a large virtual sandbox that is anything but isolated. There are many toys in it that we don’t know what they are for. And new ones are added every day. We explore them playfully and in the process we come up with ideas – good or bad….
One such toy is Dall-e 2, one of the most celebrated AIs of 2022, which can create realistic images and even artwork from a text-based description in natural language. This creative act is new and unique, and must be judged as the next stage of evolution.
The works Dall-e generates are almost perfect, and yet she generates strangely disturbing outputs in response to seemingly innocuous keywords. It begs the question, is this the toy we would give our children?
2023, video with sound, 5:22 min, analog survey with Lego(R) bricks
In this work, we are confronted with an old photo that has been “brought to life” with the help of artificial intelligence. Does the girl seem authentic? Do we feel closer to her? What becomes of faulty memory when it gives way to artificial liveliness? Isn’t this illusion more likely to help us forget the last remnants of our memory of the real person? And would “Paula” have liked what we do with her memory?
Thanks to artificial intelligence, it is already possible today to create a perfect, seemingly “living” digital self, as promised by companies such as Storyfile and Eternos.life. We leave countless traces on the internet in the form of search queries, purchases, contributions from our lives – photos, videos, comments – and much more. Will this turn us into transparent marionettes that ghost around the web forever? Who is pulling the strings in the background? Will we still be able to tell the difference between living and dead, human and artificial? And further: if the loss of a person is compensated for by a digital twin – what meaning will farewell, grief and pain still have?
Can you imagine that the memory of you exists forever on the net as a living digital twin? Would you like to resurrect a deceased loved one as a digital copy? You can vote yes or no and take part in my analogue survey with real-time visualisation (Lego(R) bricks) or vote digitally here:
Conditio Humana II, 2023, video with sound, 4:48 min
Based on the work Conditio Humana I, the question of what the conditio humana is is continued here. If we consider the highest art form of human movement – dance – it is a combination of absolute body control, elegance and emotionality. This is contrasted here with a “dance” by the humanoid robot HRP-4C, as it was presented to the world public in 2010.
Suzanne is lured into a seductive virtual dream – guided by flashing buttons and a calming voice assistant promising relief from insomnia. Unbeknownst to her, she is part of a behavioral experiment designed to manipulate her actions through algorithmic control.
The film rejects traditional narrative in favor of a fragmented, immersive loop that mirrors the disorienting logic of digital platforms – addictive, cyclical, and subtly coercive.
Social networks now shape a global economy in which attention is the most valuable resource. What appears to be free access conceals a deeper cost: constant surveillance and behavioral conditioning by tech corporations using Attention Engineering – a system that combines persuasive design, gamification, and AI, grounded in psychology.
Rabbit Hole 4.0 explores the loss of personal agency in a world where algorithms anticipate needs before we are aware of them. It reflects on the illusion of choice, the commodification of behavior, and the quiet erosion of self-determination in an era of total digital recall.
At its core, the film poses a simple but urgent question: in a world shaped by invisible influences, do we still have control over ourselves?
