Lutz Dammbeck: Seek
Der Golem geht um - Affairen zwischen Kunst, Wissenschaft und Technologie

In 2001, Lutz Dammbeck wanted to examine the relationship between art and technology with his film Das Netz. Gradually, the balance shifted during his research: Were the artists merely cheerleaders who lent a new aura to the apparatuses built by scientists and engineers on behalf of the military?
In 1970, the exhibition SOFTWARE Information Technology. Its new Meaning for Art took place at the Jewish Museum in New York in 1970, bringing together conceptual and media art with the latest technologies of the time for the first time. The main attraction for the public was Seek, a machine in which gerbils interacted with a computer-controlled gripper arm. In 2006, Dammbeck and a team built a replica: Seek II, which will be on display in the Renaissance 3.0 exhibition at the ZKM in 2023. This volume traces philosophical, scientific, political and artistic currents that are significant for the genealogy of Seek as well as for the relationship between art and technology.

Lutz Dammbeck, born in Leipzig in 1948, is a visual artist and filmmaker.