„Shell Performance“ is an installation on three portrait mode monitors/flat TV screens with a minimum diagonal length of 24” each (see tech rider for details). The software art installation takes its visual aesthetics from ASCII art which constantly reassembles itself based on the content of three different hard drives. The hard drives (which once belonged to the personal computers of unidentified individuals) contain mainstream pornographic images, commercial music as MP3 files as well as personal (sometimes highly sensitive) textual and graphic material,- the data that is fed into the algorithm that exposes it in a completely textual, thus codified way.
The software working itself through the massive amounts of data creates a performative space: the computer performs the software on the basis of the hard drives contents – and the effort is visible as the outcome on the TV screens.
Martin Reiche
Studio Martin Reiche Berlin
Formally educated as a computer scientist at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany, I became a student of media art of Michael Bielicky at Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design. Today I am a self-employed media artist and independent researcher living and working in Berlin with interest in space, perception, digitization phenomena, digital anthropology, power relations and minimalistic aesthetics. My work addresses issues such as international power networks, religion, changes in the human condition through technology, mass surveillance and electronic and physical warfare.
I have created interactive installations, sculptures, video works and experimental computer games for festivals, museums and galleries worldwide, including ZKM Museum of Media Art, ZKM Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens Digital Art Festival, INCUBARTE Art Festival Valencia, ETDM Estonian Museum of Applied Art and Design Tallinn and A MAZE. Festival Berlin.
I give talks and workshops on minimalistic human-computer interaction and on how to exfiltrate data out of surveilled networks. My latest theoretical book, “Real Virtuality” is an edited anthology on theory and applications of virtual spaces.
