26 Jun 2017 – 2 Jul 2017
Mousonturm & Naxoshalle
Frankfurt/Main, Germany
Life is Good for Now
is a speculative narration on the potential of big data for everyday life. Bernd Hopfengärtner and Ludwig Zeller in conversation with Florian Arnold.
The utilization of Big Data permeates many areas of our everyday life. Yet, especially when it is applied to the most personal and intimate information, knowledge about the condition of our bodies and the health of our minds, a quite ambivalent feeling spreads: What do companies and administrations know about us? How is this data applied to estimate our life expectation? And how do we make critical decisions about our well-being based on our quantified selves? Bernd Hopfengärtner and Ludwig Zeller’s speculative narration “Life is Good For Now” draws the image of a near future in which massive data collection lays the ground for self determined action as well as external control. The story unfolds through various constellations of objects representing the socio-political entanglement in which the issue of informational self-determination is situated. They confront us with the material foundations of abstract questions and leave a gap for us to fill: How would we fit into this picture? How would we behave in these settings and under these conditions?
Kindly supported by
Ludwig Zeller
Artist, Designer
Ludwig Zeller explores the relationship between technologies and culture through a multitude of artistic and scientific methods. In his practice he blurs the supposedly clear, disciplinary borders between art and design. Ludwig graduated from the Design Interactions programme at the Royal College of Art London and the Academy of Media Arts Cologne.
As a docent at the Academy of Art and Design Basel (FHNW) he examines with his students the poetic dimensions of our data culture through audio-visual translations between analogue and digital domains. His personal research puts a special emphasis on the narrative qualities of fictional design artefacts and scenarios. Strategies for creating awareness and reflection of our status quo as well as the discussion of the relationship between society and technology are key points of his investigations.
Ludwig has worked as a designer and artist since 2005 and joined the academic board of the Academy of Art and Design Basel in 2011. His work has been exhibited internationally at V2_ Rotterdam, FILE Sao Paulo and Rio De Janeiro, MU Eindhoven, Arnolfini Bristol, Barbican London, technarte Bilbao and written about in PAGE, De:Bug, Fast.Co Design, wemakemoneynotart, Beyond the Beyond and CAN.
Bernd Hopfengärtner
Artist, Designer
berndhopfengaertner.netBernd Hopfengärtner is a designer who observes scientific concepts and ideas, current technical developments and cultural phenomena. His interest lies in the interdependencies of these fields and the spaces of possibility spanning between them. His work is about designing these spaces by creating tangible and more or less concrete artifacts: stories, videos and objects. By imagining the possible, the speculative, the non-existent, Art and Design can contribute to a broader discourse in a way that is not accessible by purely analytical means.
Bernd is interested in Design as an interdisciplinary intermediary, placed in-between natural science, engineering, cultural and media theory and everyday-life. He holds a BFA from the Bauhaus-University in Weimar and an MA(RCA) from the Royal College of Art in London. His work was exhibited, among others, at the Wellcome Trust in London, the MoMA in New York and the National Museum of China in Beijing. Parallel to his own artistic and design practice he worked as lecturer at several art schools and universities, most recently at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne. He lives in Berlin.
Florian Arnold
Editor, Educator
florianarnold.wordpress.comFlorian Arnold, born in 1985, studied Philosophy and German Literature in Heidelberg and Paris. After his doctorate in Philosophy at the University of Heidelberg he did a second PhD in Design Theory at the University of Art and Design Offenbach where he is currently teaching as an Interim Professor (Theory of Culture and Theory of Technology). He is editor for the academic review journal “Philosophische Rundschau”, cofounder of “agora°”, and author of the introduction “Philosophie für Designer”.