Interface I, 2016

Interface I investigates the boundary between two separate interacting systems. Motors on the top and bottom pull strings, playing tug of war, and the points where the strings meet are coupled to their neighbors by elastic bands. Unpredictable signals, taken from Geiger-Müller tubes, detect the natural ambient radiation of the earth and determine the pulling strengths of each motor. The graphic shape of the red elastic mesh expresses the complex emergent behavior of the many interacting elements, and patterns develop from the contingent negotiation of individual random inputs. In Baecker’s words, “this is the beauty of chaos: it offers the potential for change.”

Ralf Baecker is a German artist working at the interface of art, science, and technology. Through installations, autonomous machines, and performances, he explores the underlying mechanisms of new media and technology. His objects perform physical realizations of thought experiments that act as subjective epistemological objects, posing fundamental questions about digital technology and complex systems and their sociopolitical entanglements. His projects provoke new imaginaries of the machinic, the artificial, and the real. His practice is a radical form of engineering that bridges traditionally discreet machine thinking with alternative technological perspectives and a new understanding of self-organizing principles.