Sebastian Schmieg

Sebastian Schmieg investigates the algorithmic circulation of images, texts, and bodies. He creates playful interventions that penetrate the shiny surfaces of our networked society and explore the realities that lie behind them. In particular Schmieg focuses on labor, algorithmic management, and artificial intelligence. He works in a wide range of media including video, website, installation, artist book, custom software, lecture performance, and delivery service.

Schmieg studied at the University of the Arts (UdK) in Berlin. His work has been exhibited internationally at Kunsthalle Zürich, The Photographers’ Gallery London, MdbK Leipzig, HeK Basel, and Chronus Art Center Shanghai. Schmieg is a professor for interface design at HTW Dresden. He is based in Berlin.

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Solo/Duo Shows

2022

  • Lights Will Guide You Home, VRAL, Online
  • Lights will guide you home (landing), /rosa, Berlin, Germany

    • 2021

    • Search by Image, Recursively, Galerie Barbara Thumm, New Viewings, Berlin

      • 2020

      • Platform Ghosts (duo show with Silvio Lorusso), Drugo More, Rijeka, Croatia

      2018

      • Projected.Capital, duo show with Silvio Lorusso, Roehrs & Boetsch, Zürich, Switzerland
      • Speedreading, Galerie b Stuttgart, Germany
      • Lifelong Learning, duo show with Silvio Lorusso, Drugo More, Rijeka, Croatia

      2017

      • Decisive Camera, Link Cabinet, Online
      • Work | Game, panke.gallery, duo show with Sebastian Lütgert, Berlin, Germany

      2016

      • Decision Space, The Photographers’ Gallery London, UK, Online
      • Search By Image (Lena/Fabio), The Photographers’ Gallery, London, UK, Media Wall
      • Segmentation.Network, Rhizome.org Frontpage, Online
      • Learning About, Art Center Nabi, Seoul, South Korea

      2015

      • LSTM (Long Short Term Memory), Cointemporary, Online

      2014

      • Parallel Universes, ScreenSaverGallery, Online/Screensaver

      2013

      • Books and Blankets 1: Search by Image, Digital-Soirée, Düsseldorf, Germany
      • 56 Broken Kindle Screens, duo show with Silvio Lorusso, Link Point, Brescia, Italy

Group Shows

2024

  • Unsettling the Algorithm, Beta Festival, Dublin, Ireland
  • Right now: Pixel Perceptions, Noorderlicht, Groningen, The Netherlands
  • Poetics of Prompting, MU, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
  • Right now: Poetics of Encryption, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, Denmark
  • Dundee Design Festival, Dundee, Scotland
  • Analog Festival, Salzkammergut, Austria
  • Sónar+D, Barcelona, Spain
  • Right now: 24/7 – Arbeit zwischen Sinnstiftung und Entgrenzung, Kunsthaus Graz, Graz, Austria
  • execute_photography, PHOTO International Festival of Photography, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, Australia
  • Poetics of Encryption, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, Germany
  • Right now: Understanding AI, Ars Electronica Center, Linz, Austria

    • 2023

    • Beta Festival, (Prompt Battle), Dublin, Ireland
    • IMPAKT Festival, (Prompt Battle), Utrecht, The Netherlands
    • LUFF Short Film Festival, (Screening), Lausanne, Switzerland
    • Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria
    • Transmediale, (Prompt Battle), Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Germany

      • 2022

      • Hybrid Biennale, (Prompt Battle), HELLERAU, Dresden, Germany
      • DYOR, Kunsthalle Zürich, Zurich, Switzerland
      • The Broken Timeline, distant.gallery, online
      • House of Mirrors – Künstliche Intelligenz als Phantasma, HMKV, Dortmund, Germany
      • Intelligence Artificielle. Nos reflets dans la machine, Musée de la main, Lausanne, Switzerland
      • Virtual Bodies: Absence/Presence in Media, Chinretsukan Gallery, Tokyo, Japan
      • Death to Screens! (Platform Seeing), The Photographers' Gallery, Media Wall, London, UK

        • 2021

        • AUTOMATIC DREAMS, Galerie Wundersee, Düsseldorf, Germany
        • Glass Room, OBA, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
        • HYBRID BY NATURE – Human.Machine.Interaction, online
        • GETXOPHOTO, Getxo, Spain
        • ASAP – We Must Hurry To Slow Down, Kunstraum hase29, Osnabrück, Germany
        • Glass Room, dbieb, Leeuwarden, The Netherlands
        • Open Codes. Networked Commons, Nam June Paik Art Center, Seoul Capital Area, South Korea
        • The First and Only Retrospective of Artistic Computer Screensavers, ScreenSaverGallery
        • Fleeting Media. Publishing Post-Photography, Fotobibliothek in der Passage, Winterthur, Switzerland

          • 2020

          • Better Off Online, König Galerie / König Digital, Online
          • The Sea Is Glowing, Exportdrvo, Rijeka, Croatia
          • FitArt, App
          • On entering a living being. From Social Sculpture to Platform Capitalism, Kunstraum Kreuzberg, Berlin, Germany
          • Human services, PAN! et LAC&S, Limoges, France
          • Algotaylorism, La Kunsthalle, Mulhouse, France

            • 2019

            2018

            2017

            • THE WRONG CLUB, Galerie Ampersand, Cologne, Germany
            • The Reading Laboratory
            • Piksel Festival, Bergen, Norway
            • Modern Times, Dikeou Pop-Up, Denver, USA(Screening)
            • Escaping the Digital Unease!, Langenthal, Switzerland
            • WINDOWS, Basel, Switzerland
            • Bienne Festival of Photography, Bienne, Switzerland

            2016

            • Impakt Festival: Authenticity?, Utrecht, The Netherlands
            • Robots Building Robots, Hedreen Gallery, Seattle, USA
            • Sight & Sound, Montreal, Canada
            • Performing Encounters (Screening), Haus am Lützowplatz, Berlin, Germany
            • Colomboscope 2016, Colombo, Sri Lanka
            • THE POSTHUMAN (Screening), Crosstalk Video Art Festival, Budapest, Hungary
            • setBackground, EMBASSY Gallery, Edinburgh, United Kingdom

            2015

            • The ROCI Road to Peace: Experiments in the Unfamiliar, Academy Art Museum, Easton, USA
            • Phaenomenale, phæno, Wolfsburg, Germany
            • UNCANNY, REVERSE, New York, USA
            • Abandon Normal Devices, Grizedale Forest, UK
            • ISEA, Vancouver, Canada
            • NEWMAN, Druskininkai, Lithuania
            • Offline Art: Are you still there?, Museum Angewandte Kunst, Frankfurt, Germany
            • 16th media art biennale WRO 2015, Wroclaw, Poland
            • WTi 2.0, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany
            • The New Black (Resonate), Gallery 12 New Media HUB, Belgrade, Serbia
            • Transmediale: Capture All, Berlin, Germany

            2014

            • Autopoiesis is Greek for self creation, digital3mpire, Düsseldorf, Germany
            • The C(h)roma Show, Croma store, Bangalore, India
            • Suchroutinen: Erzählungen von Datenbanken, D21 Kunstraum, Leipzig, Germany
            • Impakt Festival, Utrecht, The Netherlands
            • Out of Office, Arcade Cardiff, Cardiff, United Kingdom
            • Dans Cinquante Ans d’Ici, Les Territoires, Montreal, Canada
            • #local-non-off-line, Cologne, Germany
            • Transmediale: Afterglow, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Germany

            2013

            • Art Hack Day Berlin: Going Dark, LEAP, Berlin, Germany
            • local.#non.access, km temporaer, Berlin, Germany
            • SI Fest #22, Savignano, Italy
            • Vanishing Point, bitforms gallery, New York, USA
            • Never Odd or Even | Palindrome, team titanic, Berlin, Berlin
            • #FUTUREMYTH, 319 Scholes, New York, USA
            • Structures for Reading, Center for Book and Paper Arts, Chicago, USA
            • DVD Dead Drop Vol.5, Museum of Moving Image, New York, USA
            • Fahrenheit 39, Ravenna, Italy
            • Stuttgarter Filmwinter, Wilhelmspalais, Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany

            2012

            • reflecting on networks, km temporaer, Berlin, Germany
            • Multiplicity 2, 129 Gallery, Berlin, Germany
            • BYOB Berlin, Platoon Kunsthalle, Berlin, Germany
            • MICRO Festival, Milan, Italy
            • platform 79, Berlin, Germany
            • Anika Schwarzlose & Jonas Lund, Sebastian Schmieg, W139, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Curation

2021

2019

2018

Talks

2023

  • MIT Media Lab Future Sketches group, online
  • Click and Collect: Show me your dataset, Somerset House, online
  • /imagine an overheated debate:: #AIart, trending on Twitter, 4K render, Transmediale, Akademie der Künste, Berlin

    • 2022

    • Master Forum OVER/FLOW, Merz Akademie, Stuttgart (online)
    • Guesswork as Photography, Virtual Photography Symposium, University of Westminster, London, UK
    • In den Gefühlsmaschinen, Literaturforum im Brecht-Haus, Berlin
    • web3n3rgy (web design = designing a web), Never Ready, A Congress on the Visuality of the Internet, HfbK Hamburg
    • Curating on the web: Interfering with the assumptions of networked platforms and interfaces, Online — via Exhibition Research Lab, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool

      • 2021

      • Blurred Boundaries – convergence of real and virtual spaces, Goethe-Instituts of East Asia and HeK Basel, online
      • Adresse & Auswahl, HGB Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany
      • Working in the browser, Shenkar College, Ramat Gan, Israel
      • Laborious Intelligence, Online KISDtalk, Köln International School of Design

        • 2020

        • Interface Cultures Invited Lectures Series, University of Art and Industrial Design in Linz, online
        • Laborious Relations, with Silvio Lorusso, Aksioma, online
        • Unheimliche Heimlichkeit, mit Florian Alexander Schmidt, (How) do we (want to) work (together) (as (socially engaged) designers (students and neighbours)) in neoliberal times)?, online
        • Gallery.Delivery: In conversation with the courier, Livestream
        • Entreprecariat book presentation: Silvio Lorusso in conversation with Sebastian Schmieg, panke.gallery, Berlin, Germany
        • Automate All The Things! Symposium, Moderna Galerija, Ljubljana, Slovenia

          • 2019

          2018

          • Menschen als Software-Erweiterungen, Kunstverein Hildesheim, Hildesheim, Germany
          • Theater und Netz, Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, Berlin, Germany
          • re:publica, Berlin, Germany
          • Encoding Cultures: Leben mit intelligenten Maschinen, ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany
          • I Will Say Whatever You Want In Front Of A Pizza, HfK Bremen, Germany

          2017

          • Humans as Software Extensions, 34C3, Leipzig, Germany
          • Reading as Data-Mining, FAU Erlangen, Germany
          • Brno University Of Technology, Brno, Czech Republic
          • I Will Say Whatever You Want In Front Of A Pizza, Kunstverein Harburger Bahnhof, Hamburg, Germany
          • Menschen als Software-Erweiterungen, World Usability Day, Frankfurt, Germany
          • The Conference, Malmö, Sweden
          • Ten Desperate Attempts At Exploring The Medium Of Leisure, with Leisure Inc., panke.gallery, Berlin, Germany
          • re:publica, Berlin, Germany
          • Resonate, Belgrade, Serbia
          • Transmediale Excursion: “The melancholy of subversion: Rethinking resistance in the post-truth era”, Berlin, Germany

          2016

          • Ringvorlesung, Merz Akademie, Stuttgart, Germany

          2015

          • Performing Encounters, District, Berlin, Germany
          • Expose and Repurpose: Opposing Self-Commodification, Transmediale, Berlin, Germany
          • User-generated Art, Digitaler Salon, HIIG, Berlin, Germany

          2014

          • Artist Talk, WRO Art Center, Wroclaw, Poland
          • tschk!talks, Berlin, Germany

          2013

          • Pecha Kucha, Berlin, Germany

          2012

          • Reflecting On Networks, Artist Talk, km temporaer, Berlin, Germany
          • tschk!talks, Berlin, Germany

Teaching

Since 2019

  • Professor at HTW Dresden

2018

  • Lecturer, Uni Hildesheim

2017

  • Lecturer, Merz Akademie, Stuttgart

2015+2016

  • Lecturer, FH Potsdam

2014+2015

  • Lecturer, Merz Akademie, Stuttgart

Residencies & Commissions

2023

  • [permanent.beta] Fotomuseum Winterthur, Commission

2022

  • 100 neue Wörter für Zuhause, Literaturforum im Brecht Haus, Commission

2021

  • Goethe-Instituts of East Asia, Commission

2019

  • Haus der elektronischen Künste Basel, Switzerland, Commission

2018

  • Drehmoment, Kulturregion Stuttgart + Stadt Leonberg, Germany, Commission

2017

  • Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, Germany, Residency

2016

  • The Photographers’ Gallery, London, UK, Commission
  • EMBASSY gallery Edinburgh, UK, Commission

2015

  • Abandon Normal Devices, UK, Commission

2014

  • Goethe@WRO, Goethe Institut + WRO Art Center, Wroclaw, Poland, Residency

Awards

2018

  • Shortlist “P3 Post Photography Prototyping Price”, Fotomuseum Winterthur + Julius Bär Foundation
  • Shortlist “net based award”, Haus der elektronischen Künste Basel

2015

  • Social Media Art Award, Phaenomenale, with Silvio Lorusso

2010

  • Expanded-Media-Preis “Online/Offline”, Stuttgarter Filmwinter, Stuttgart, Germany

Selected Articles, Interviews, etc.