Knowbotic Research

Wilhelm, Hübler and Tuchacek studied at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne in the early 1990s and formed Knowbotic Research while there. The group developed interdisciplinary projects concerned with information and knowledge structures, databases, self-organization, human-machine interfaces and networked forms of agency.

Knowbotic Research frequently worked with additional collaborators, including scientists, philosophers and engineers. In 1995, in collaboration with the Academy of Media Arts Cologne, the group founded mem_brane, a laboratory for media strategies.

In 2009, the collaboration between Wilhelm, Hübler and Tuchacek ended. Wilhelm and Hübler continued working as knowbotiq.

Art historian Andreas Broeckmann discusses Knowbotic Research in his account of the growing importance of systems thinking and ecology to technological art in the late 20th century.

An early project, Simulationsraum-Mosaik mobiler Datenklänge (SMDK, 1993), used a database of short sound samples collected internationally. The samples were represented as mobile agents in a self-organising artificial-life system. Visitors moved through the installation and could influence the grouping and playback of the sounds. SMDK received the Golden Nica for Interactive Art at the Prix Ars Electronica in 1993.

Knowbotic Research began Dialogue with the Knowbotic South (DWTKS) in 1994. The installation and network project used data from Antarctic scientific research. It was conceived as a "Public Knowledge Space" in which software agents, or "knowbots", operated on changing data sets. Oliver Grau discusses the work in Virtual Art: From Illusion to Immersion as a form of virtual knowledge space. The project received the August Seeling Förderpreis of the Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum's supporting association in 1997.

In 1997, the group presented IO_dencies, questioning urbanity at Canon ARTLAB in Tokyo. It used networked interfaces and data on the city to create an environment that participants could alter. Later versions were developed for other cities, including São Paulo. IO_dencies received the Golden Nica in the .NET category at the 1998 Prix Ars Electronica.

Minds of Concern::Breaking News was shown in 2002 as part of Open_Source_Art_Hack at the New Museum in New York. Visitors could select activist groups and non-governmental organizations through a web interface and run security checks on their servers; the results were relayed through news tickers, strobe lights and sound in the gallery. The port-scanning element was later disabled because it violated the terms of service of the museum's upstream Internet provider. Curator Steve Dietz described the incident as an example of what Knowbotic Research called a "legal bug": an activity restricted by contract rather than by law.

Knowbotic Research was among the artists presented in the Austrian Pavilion at the 48th Venice Biennale in 1999. The Austrian participation was commissioned by Peter Weibel. The group later participated in the Seoul Biennale in 2002, the Hong Kong-Shenzhen Biennale in 2007 and the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam in 2009.

• 1993, Golden Nica, Prix Ars Electronica, for Simulationsraum-Mosaik mobiler Datenklänge.
• 1995, Siemens Media Arts Prize, ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe.
• 1997, August Seeling Förderpreis of the supporting association of the Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum, for Dialogue with the Knowbotic South.
• 1998, Golden Nica, Prix Ars Electronica, .NET category, for IO_dencies.
• 2000, International Media Art Award, ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, for IO_dencies.