Knowbotic Research

Still images from “Dialogue with the knowbotic south (DWTKS)“, 1993-1995

Knowbotic Research – Dialogue with the Knowbotic South, Interactive Installation 1994-1997

Note on the artist/work:

Dialogue With The Knowbotic South- strategies on a changing view of nature. A dynamic map of a data-land-scape providing a form of interaction with multilocal and multipresent information-fields. Following the example of the manneristic representations of continents as Kunst- und Wunderkammern by the Antwerp painter Jan van Kessel (1626-1679), Knowbotic Research (KR+cF) devises a model of a Computer Aided Antarctica as a public knowledge space: The structure-imposing units in this hypothetical area are knowbots. These elements incorporate data sets of current antarctic research, which symbolize direct real-time links to the reference subjects occurring in scientific research and the underlying reference nature -in this case, natural events at the South Pole-. In order to emhasize the evolutionary potential of this fiction of interacting with information-landscapes, KR+cF creates simple visual metaphors outlined on the DWTKS Digital Landscape. A spatial-interactive feature allows the user to ‘immerse’ himself into each knowbot. The data representations of the research subjects, data sets, models and simuations forming the -fictitious modifyable- objects of the knowbot, will only become visible within the architectural structure.

Knowbotic Research is a German-Swiss electronic art group, established in 1991. Its members are Yvonne Wilhelm, Christian Hübler and Alexander Tuchacek. They hold a professorship for Art and Media at the University of the Arts in Zurich.

The Knowbotic Research group has experimented with the intersection of technology, information and knowledge, interface, immersive virtual reality and networked agency. In their work Simulation Mosaik Data Klaenge from 1993, they experimented with so called intelligent agent, applications which can conglomerate diaphanous information by themselves (also called knowbots) and intelligent virtual spaces (flexible information-environments distributed in electronic networks). Knowbotic Research KR+cF has regularly invited people from non-art fields to participate in their projects, such as scientists, philosophers and engineers, depending on the concept of each project. In partnership with the Academy of Media Arts Cologne, Knowbotic Research KR+cF has founded Membrane, a laboratory for media strategies, in 1995. In their more recent work, they created media-based projects that try to intervene in the (physical or digital) public domain.
Knowbotic is a coinage that combined “knowledge” with “robot”, meaning intellectual agent on the Internet. Knowbotic has developed some projects themed on an information environment and a computer interface. Since 1998, it has become more flexible, and with these main three of them, different members from various fields such as art, science, and philosophy, have joined in each program. In 1997, it worked with Japanese art group, Canon Art Lab, in Tokyo. This project aimed at revealing the function of the city by interacting between real and virtual world.