Ralf Baecker

Cybernetic Imagineries

Dreamforms of the technical

Located at the intersections of art, science, and technology, the artistic practice of Ralf Baecker (born 1977 in Düsseldorf, lives and works in Berlin and Bremen) explores fundamental mechanisms of the digital, cybernetics, artificial neural networks and artificial life. His complex and poetic objects oscillate between the algorithmic/artificial and the organic/nature-like. As translations and spatializations of digital processes, they offer an alternative sight behind the surfaces of contemporary technology and its power structures.

Cybernetic Imaginaries—the first monograph of the artist—is a comprehensive documentation of his experimental poetic machines, installations, and performances. In addition to photographs, sketches, technical drawings, and detailed descriptions of Baecker's central works, media-theoretical and art-historical essays by Siegfried Zielinski, Andreas Broeckmann, and an interview with the curator Daria Parkhomenko contextualize the work of Ralf Baecker.