On June 7th, the Colourful Night of Digitization, a festival to celebrate the diversity of perspectives and challenges on digitization that exists in Karlsruhe, will take place. This initiative opens the doors of more than 60 institutions (libraries, museums, universities, enterprises, civil initiatives) to the citizens of Karlsruhe to show and discuss diverse topics and approaches to digitality.

This year the HfG Karlsruhe joints this celebration, offering an overview of projects challenging our notion of digitally, as well as presenting installations of students and alumnae in the main location.

The program will open at 14:00 in Triangel, the central location, where three artworks created by HfG students and alumnae will be displayed during the whole day: The artists collective Francis Karat will present »ECHOS AND ARCHIVES Part II: Im Strudel der Daten und flüchtigen Scheine« in Kronenplatz, where they play with let Artificial Intelligence hallucinations. Chelsea Kin and Hoin Ji will present »Material Practice: Hyper Materials« a multichannel video installation in which they reflect on materiality and solidarity at Triangel's Werkstatt. Tina Jander will present her video installation »A Factor of Evolution« at the studio space, with a set designed by Ewa Wasilewska.

All of them will present their work and have a Q&A at 19:30, presented by HfG Open Resource Center member Víctor Fancelli Capdevila, just before the party starts.

After the opening, people can move around to discover the program of different institutions participating (check the whole the programm in the web-app). From 15:30 to 18:30 the HfG will host the following presentations in English and German:

15:30 | Digital Matters: Mensch mit LiCoO2 | Nina Zschocke

What is the materiality of the digital and what significance do digital media have for the experience and production of real environments? What concepts are available to us to better understand the relationship of digital media to our own bodies and environments? In what ways do artists bring material dimensions of digital media into experience? This lecture gives a first brief insight into an interdisciplinary field of research. It focuses on relationships between digital technologies and physical bodies of different kinds - be they built environments, ecosystems, brains or geological formations. Among other things, the lecture will refer to the example of the Upper Rhine Graben with its geothermal and chemical resources (e.g. lithium) relevant to digital technology.

Nina Zschocke is an art historian and media theorist. She received her doctorate from the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Cologne and has worked in research and teaching at various universities, including Columbia University New York, University of Zurich, ETH Zurich, Bern University of the Arts. Since April 2024, Nina Zschocke has been Professor of Art Studies at the HfG Karlsruhe with a focus on 'Digital Aesthetics'.

16:15 | An overview on Latent Utopias: Collaborative World-Building Using Generative AI and Large Language Models | Ayodele Arigbabu

Ayodele Arigbabu will present an overview of his workshop, where he explored the concept of latent utopias through the orchestration of human–computer interaction and co-creation. Artificial intelligence is centered in the workshop process, for the shared notion of 'neural networks' that exists between humans and machine learning models, the augmentation AI provides for human creativity and ingenuity, the constant utopian hope humans place in a technologically advanced future (currently invested in AI) and the shared cognitive functioning of both human and artificial intelligence networks as “probability engines”. The workshop will be grounded with a reflective discourse on the concept of utopia, what it connotes, the questions raised by different artistic representations of utopia, and how different speculative utopian scenarios being woven around the ascendance of artificial intelligence-driven solutions influence those representations. The import of the use of generative AI art within this discourse will also be reviewed, as will the idea of 'latent space' as a fuzzy probabilistic space from which humans and machines now jointly fish for logic and inspiration.

Ayodele Arigbabu is a writer, architect, and creative technologist and is currently a PhD candidate in artistic research at Trondheim Academy of Fine Art, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).

17:00 | Fitness-Tracking und Computerspiel-Interfaces. Kritische Untersuchung digitaler Selbsttechnologien | Mortiz Konrad

Fitness-Tracker und Smart Watches sind bereits seit Jahren zum Massenphänomen avanciert. Solche und ähnliche Geräte sammeln Vitaldaten und spiegeln uns unsere Gesundheit, Leistungsfähigkeit oder auch mentale Gesundheit in Form diskreter Daten. Nicht selten kommen hier Elemente aus User-Interfaces zum Einsatz, die aus dem Gaming entlehnt werden: Fortschrittsbalken, Energieanzeigen, Punkte und Level-Ups machen aus unserer Fitness ein Spiel – und werden so möglicherweise zu unserem einzigen Mittel des Selbstbezugs.

Moritz Konrad arbeitet in verschiedenen Medien und Disziplinen zu Internetkulturen, visuellen Phänomenen des digitalen Alltags und den Wechselwirkungen zwischen Hoch- und Populärkultur. 2019 schloss er sein Studium an der Staatlichen Akademie der bildenden Künste Karlsruhe ab. Derzeit beendet er sein Studium in Kunstwissenschaft und Medienphilosophie an der Staatlichen Hochschule für Gestaltung Karlsruhe, wo er Gründungsmitglied und Mitherausgeber des studentischen Journals Schwarm und studentische Hilfskraft beim DFG Projekt „Das digitale Bild“ ist.

17:45 | After Memory: Recalling and Foretelling across Time, Space and Networks | Víctor Fancelli Capdevila

On October 2024 the project After Memory will open with a symposium at ZKM | Zentrum für Kunst und Medien Karlsruhe to explore the changes and influences between digitality and memory. How do we remember and forget when we are overwhelmed of messages and images in social media?

Víctor Fancelli Capdevila works as a Digital Archivist at the Open Resource Centre (ORC) at the HfG Karlsruhe. He had a background in Humanities, Literature, Media Philosophy and Art History and has been writing, teaching and organizing debates around other digitalities. Since 2023 he also researches and works on the project After Memory.