During the 1960s and 1970s, the automation of data processing elevated the status of the administrative apparatus, turning metrics and controllability into a social utopia. Akribie und Obsession explores how cybernetic thought resonated across artistic and social practices, architecture, and technology. Ranging from Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt’s typewriter art and the East German Ministry for State Security’s data storage to Roland Kayn’s cybernetic compositions, this volume brings together various forms of data processing and visualization. It explores the cybernetic utopias of GDR science fiction, the planned, self-regulating city of Etarea, and the Academy for Marxist-Leninist Organizational Science.
The Zentrum für Netzkunst (Center for Net Art, founded in Berlin in 2019) reconstructs, preserves, and archives net art and net culture. Based at the Haus der Statistik in Berlin, its members include !Mediengruppe Bitnik, Tereza Havlíková, Paloma Oliveira, Anneliese Ostertag, Tabea Rossol, Robert Sakrowski, and Cornelia Sollfrank.
