In the Hindu mythological tradition Vishnu is known as "the Preserver of the universe." Vishnu is the essence of all beings, the force which originates and develops existences, which maintains the universe.
ALife is a sub-field of Artificial Intelligence concerned with generating life-like behaviour. In an ironic artistic comment on the rhetoric of life surrounding ALife practice, in this work Vishnu’s role as the creator and destroyer of all existences appears here inscribed in the computational algorithm. Vishnu’s ... is a dance piece. The sequence of movements in the choreography is dictated by an algorithm which simulates a virtual ecosystem.

Two different runs of the performance will provide different experiences for the audience. Sometimes it ends quickly while at other times it perdures. The course of the performance is dictated by the autonomous interactions and evolution of the population.

tag: 2D & 3D Computer Animation

A nihilistic parody of a televised art award ceremony. The film is a dark twisted comedy with many levels of perception. The "Art Awards" comments on a variety of subjects ranging from art criticism to terrorism. The film may also be seen as a criticism to the very premature decision of awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Obama, as well as a reaction to the events of July 22 in Norway

The Re: Dakar Arts Festival project documents a new art scam form. The scammers approach artists and galerists with open calls for a fake festival in Dakar, Senegal. To appear professional, they adopt different identities. To unveil their practice, three virtual characters including their online identities were created to scam the scammers. Investigate their stories in an installation and find entrance points to continue following the story online. Read their blogs or become friends with them on Facebook to unveil more details about the art scam plot.

We received an email invitation to participate in the Dakar Arts Festival. Believing the authenticity of the invitation we replied. After a more detailed online search, we started to doubt the realness of the festival and it turned out to be a scam. We found a handful of artists who had fallen victims to this fraud, therefore we decided to further investigate the scamming practice. In West Africa, scammers operate from local internet cafes adopting fake identities, the availability of email transformed a local form of fraud into an important export industry. To reverse the scam we researched and adapted practices of scambaiters.   Scambaiters are people who reply to scam emails, being fully aware that the emails are written by a scammers. Scambaiting involves tricking internet scammers into believing you are a potential victim... This means that the scambaiters turn the tables and lure the scammers into incredible story-plots, always giving the scammers the feeling that they will get  their money. It is easy for the scammers to use a fake identity promising victims a high amount of money, on the other hand it is as easy for the intended victim to do the same.

To safely approach the scammers, we created three virtual characters; artist, galerist and secretary. We gave them a home in Switzerland. In computer terminology, a home may refer to a homepage or a home directory which contains personal information and imposes the persons existence, so we supported the created virtual identities with homepages and profiles on social media platforms. They are easy to create, hence we started to question the authenticity of many messages we received online. We assume that online traces or google-hits underlines our existence, yet there are no tools to proof our identity.

The “Re: Dakar Arts Festival” project reveals the practice of scammers and questions the trust we put in online representations. The installation, in artist Heidi Hupfburg's suitcase, reconstructs the correspondence between our virtual identities and the scammers. This in form of an interactive audio line, through documents and a map. Visitors can also collect postcards of Heidi's art work and her gallerist Peter Irrthums business cards, both serve as entrance points to a transmedia story that continues to unfold the scam online.