UBERMORGEN.COM - EKMRZ Trilogy

UBERMORGEN.COM
EKMRZ Trilogy

- GWEI - Google Will Eat Itself *
- Amazon Noir - The Big Book Crime *
- The Sound of eBay

Galerija Vžigalica, Ljubljana, Slovenia
August 11 – September 16, 2010

Opening: August 11, 8.00 PM

* GWEI and Amazon Noir have been realized in collaboration with Alessandro Ludovico & Paolo Cirio.

PRESS RELEASE

Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art Ljubljana is proud to announce “EKMRZ Trilogy”, the first solo exhibition of UBERMORGEN.COM in Slovenia.

UBERMORGEN.COM is attracted to the surface of Google, Amazon and eBay, the three historical e-giants who have brilliantly managed to survive the dotcom boom and bust. Back then and still today, the three kings form the powerful spearhead of e-commerce (EKMRZ). By creating the third piece – the Sound of eBay – we wrap up the trilogy we have started in 2005 with the killer concept GWEI - Google Will Eat Itself and carried forward in 2006 with the dark Amazon Noir.

Vžigalica gallery, August - September, 2010.
Photo: Aksioma

GWEI – Google Will Eat Itself *
2005-09

We generate money by serving Google text advertisments on a network of hidden Websites. With this money we automatically buy Google shares via our Swiss bank account. We buy Google via their own advertisment dollars! Google eats itself - but in the end we own it! By establishing this autocannibalistic model we deconstruct the new global advertisment mechanisms by rendering them into a surreal click- based economic model.

Amazon Noir – the Big Book Crime *
2006-07

The Bad Guys stole copyrighted books from Amazon by using sophisticated robot-perversion technology. A subliminal media fight and a covert legal dispute escalated into an online showdown with the heist of over 3000 books at the center of the story. We had daily shoot outs with the global mass-media, we continuously pushed the boundaries of copyright (books are just pixels on a screen or just ink on paper), we resisted kickback-bribes from powerful Amazon.com until they finally gave in and sold the technology for an undisclosed sum to Amazon. Betrayal, blasphemy and pessimism finally split the gang of bad guys. The good guys (Amazon.com) won the showdown and drove off into the blistering sun with the beautiful femme fatale, the seductive and erotic massmedia.

The Sound of eBay
2008-09

We generate unique sosgs by using eBay user-data. You simply enter any eBay username (your own or someone else’s) and add your email address so we can notify you as soon as the song is ready for downloading. Then click “generate” and our robots sprawl out into the net to collect data. Then the robots bring back the data to our sc3 supercollider soundgeneration- engine. Finally, the complex software-machine starts generating a score- file which is then transformed into your unique but uniform song and presented in teletext porn style! We sell out your human needs digitally...

UBERMORGEN.COM is an artist duo created in Vienna, Austria, by lizvlx and Hans Bernhard. Behind UBERMORGEN.COM we can find one of the most unmatchable identities – controversial and iconoclastic – of the contemporary European techno-fine-art avant-garde. Their open circuit of conceptual art, drawing, software art, pixel painting, computer installations, net.art, sculpture and digital activism (media hacking) transforms their brand into a hybrid Gesamtkunstwerk. The computer and the network are (ab)used to create art and combine its multiple forms. the permanent amalgamation of fact and fiction points toward an extremely expanded concept of one’s working materials that for UBERMORGEN.COM also include (international) rights, democracy and global communication (input-feedback loops). “Ubermorgen” is the German word both for “the day after tomorrow” and “super-tomorrow”.

lizvlx lizvlx is an austrian net.artist working in the fields of digital imagery, media actionism and programming. She studied both commercial sciences as well as fine arts in Vienna and now works out of St. Moritz and Vienna. Using technology, computers, and sculpture as media since 1994, she has exhibited her net.art works in venues like the Ars Electronica (Austria), the Konsthall Malmoe (Sweden), the NTT ICC Museum (Japan), ARCO (Spain) or the Lentos Kunstmuseum (Austria). lizvlx was also a founding member of 194.152.164.137 and of netznetz.net. lizvlx is allergic to milk protein and enjoys changing hair colors.

Hans Bernhard Hans Bernhard is a swiss-american writer, actionist and digital artist working in the field of media hacking, txt-modification, conceptual art and net.art. Living and working in Vienna and St. Moritz. Since the mid-1990’s, he has been a frequent speaker at conferences and universities worldwide, and has exhibited his work in venues such as Laboral Gijon (Spain), SFMOMA (USA), ZKM (Germany), New Museum New York (USA), Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (Japan), MOCA Taipei (Taiwan) or Mumok Vienna (Austria). Hans Bernhard is a co-founder of etoy (www.etoy.com). He studied visual communication, digital art, and aesthetics in Vienna (Weibel), San Diego (Manovich), Pasadena (Lunenfeld), and Wuppertal (Brock). Hans Bernhard weighs 130 Kgs (290 pounds), is keen on attention and gets a new haircut in every city he travels to.

Credits:

UBERMORGEN.COM: EKMRZ Trilogy

Produced by Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana
Co-produced by City Art Museum Ljubljana
Executive producer: Marcela Okretič and Janez Janša

Supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia, Austrian Cultural Forum Ljubljana and the City of Ljubljana.
Special thanks: Fabio Paris Art Gallery, Inke Arns, Jana Renée Wilcoxen, RPS d.o.o., David Tavčar

Contact:
Aksioma - Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana