UBERMORGEN is a Swiss-Austrian digital art duo founded in 1995 by Liz Haas, known as lizvlx, and Luzius Bernhard, also credited in earlier works as Hans Bernhard. Emerging from the 1990s net.art and Internet art scenes, the duo became known for projects that combine conceptual art, media hacking, software, performance, installation and online intervention.

UBERMORGEN's work frequently uses the language and interfaces of corporations, legal systems, state institutions and online platforms. Their best-known projects include Voteauction (2000), an online intervention that presented itself as a marketplace for buying and selling votes during the 2000 United States presidential election; the EKMRZ Trilogy, consisting of Google Will Eat Itself, Amazon Noir and The Sound of eBay; and later works involving machine learning, blockchain systems and artificial intelligence.

The duo live and work in Basel, S-chanf near St. Moritz and Vienna. Haas and Bernhard have taught at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne and are professors in the Digital Arts department at the University of Applied Arts Vienna.

History and work

Early net.art and online work

UBERMORGEN originated in the 1990s context of net.art, a loose international movement of artists working directly with the Internet as artistic medium, distribution channel and social space. Their early projects were shown primarily online and were connected to the broader development of Internet art and digital art in Europe and North America.

Luzius Bernhard was also involved with etoy, whose campaigns and online actions became important reference points for later forms of tactical media and Internet-based cultural intervention.

Media hacking and digital actionism

In the early 2000s UBERMORGEN became associated with media hacking and digital actionism. Their works from this period often imitated the formats of businesses, courts, government agencies or online services, creating ambiguity between artwork, hoax, political intervention and institutional critique.

The duo's most widely discussed project from this period is Voteauction (2000). The work appeared to offer a platform where American voters could sell their votes to the highest bidder during the 2000 United States presidential election. Although the project functioned as an artwork and media intervention, it provoked legal responses in several U.S. states and generated widespread press attention.

In 2001 UBERMORGEN collaborated with Christoph Schlingensief on NAZI~LINE, a fake neo-Nazi helpline and exit-strategy agency developed in connection with Schlingensief's Hamlet project in Zurich. The work continued the duo's interest in institutional mimicry, political ambiguity and provocative public staging.

Injunction Generator

Injunction Generator is an Internet art and software project by UBERMORGEN. It generated apparently formal legal injunctions and personalized documents in formats such as RTF and PDF, allowing users to send cease-and-desist-style requests to website owners, DNS administrators and journalists.

The project was conceived in relation to the legal conflicts surrounding Voteauction. It used the appearance of legal procedure to examine how quickly online intermediaries, service providers and media actors can respond to claims of authority, even when those claims are ambiguous or procedurally questionable. The work is an example of UBERMORGEN's broader use of bureaucratic and corporate forms as artistic material.

EKMRZ Trilogy

In the mid-2000s UBERMORGEN produced the EKMRZ Trilogy, a group of projects addressing e-commerce, platform capitalism and automated extraction. The trilogy consists of Google Will Eat Itself, Amazon Noir and The Sound of eBay.

Google Will Eat Itself used advertising revenue generated through Google AdSense to buy shares in Google, proposing a circular system in which Google's own economic mechanisms would gradually be turned against it. Amazon Noir, developed with Alessandro Ludovico and Paolo Cirio, addressed copyright, automation and the extraction of data from Amazon's book-search infrastructure. The Sound of eBay translated online auction data into sound, continuing the duo's investigation of commercial platforms as aesthetic and political systems.

The trilogy is often discussed as part of UBERMORGEN's transition from early net.art and media hacking toward a more installation-based and institutionally exhibited practice.

Research-based and installation works

From the late 2000s onward, UBERMORGEN increasingly worked with installation, video, performance and research-based formats. Projects from this period include Superenhanced, WOPPOW, the KRAFT series, TORTURE CLASSICS and CLICKISTAN.

CLICKISTAN, commissioned by the Whitney Museum of American Art, is an online work that uses the format of a game-like interface to explore attention, interactivity and the political economy of clicking.

In 2013 the duo released The Project Formerly Known As Kindle Forkbomb, continuing their engagement with digital distribution, copyright systems and the technical infrastructures of reading.

Machine learning, blockchain and Happy Dystopia

In the 2020s UBERMORGEN's work increasingly addressed machine learning, blockchain systems, artificial intelligence and the aesthetics of automated culture. In 2021 they collaborated with digital humanist Leonardo Impett and curator Joasia Krysa on The Next Biennial Should Be Curated by a Machine, a project exploring the use of machine learning in curatorial processes.

UNINVITED, a collaboration with Nye Thompson, has been described as "a horror film for machine networks and human-machine organisms". It was presented as both a film and video installation and made available online.

Between 2023 and 2024 UBERMORGEN were commissioned by the KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin and presented PMC Wagner Arts in the exhibition Poetics of Encryption.

At the Busan Biennale 2024 they exhibited The Silver Singularity, described as the final work in their Happy Dystopia series. The duo also published a manifesto on Happy Dystopia through KUNSTFORUM International.

Themes and critical interpretation

UBERMORGEN's work is frequently associated with media hacking, tactical media, institutional critique and conceptual art. Their projects often appropriate the formats of corporations, legal documents, online markets, search engines, digital platforms and state-like authorities. Rather than presenting critique from outside these systems, the duo often work by imitating, exaggerating or redirecting their internal logic.

A recurring feature of their practice is ambiguity. Many of their projects are difficult to classify as artwork, hoax, service, protest, scam or corporate experiment. Critics have interpreted this ambiguity as central to their method: the works create situations in which audiences, journalists, companies and legal authorities must decide whether the project is real, fictional, criminal, artistic or merely procedural.

Their work also uses affirmation and over-identification. Instead of simply denouncing commercial or bureaucratic systems, UBERMORGEN often reproduce those systems' language, visual identity and operational procedures. This strategy allows the works to expose the ideological assumptions of e-commerce, online governance, platform capitalism and technological authority.

In their later work, these concerns extend to machine vision, artificial intelligence, blockchain economies and automated cultural production. Projects such as The Next Biennial Should Be Curated by a Machine, UNINVITED, PMC Wagner Arts and The Silver Singularity continue the duo's long-standing interest in technological systems that produce, organize or govern reality.

Exhibitions

UBERMORGEN's works have been presented in museums, galleries, biennials, festivals and online platforms internationally. Exhibition contexts have included SFMOMA, the Centre Pompidou, ZKM Karlsruhe, MUMOK Vienna, Ars Electronica Linz, WRO Media Art Biennale, MoCA Taipei, Witte de With Rotterdam, Lentos Art Museum Linz, the Biennale of Sydney, ARCO Madrid, the New Museum in New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin and the Busan Biennale.

Teaching

Liz Haas and Luzius Bernhard have taught at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne and have held the professorship for Digital Art at the University of Applied Arts Vienna since 2023, where they lead the Digital Arts department. Their teaching is connected to digital art, media art, research-based artistic practice, artificial intelligence, machine learning, blockchain-based practices and contemporary networked culture.

Awards

  • Pax Art Award, 2023
  • Swiss Art Award, 2011
  • ARCO Beep Award, 2009
  • IBM Award for New Media, Stuttgarter Filmwinter, 2007
  • Ars Electronica Award of Distinction for Voteauction, 2005
  • Ars Electronica Honorary Mentions for Injunction Generator and Google Will Eat Itself
  • Ars Electronica Golden Nica for etoy / digital hijack, 1996

Selected publications

  • Domenico Quaranta, ed., UBERMORGEN.COM, FPEditions, Brescia, 2009, ISBN 978-8890330858.
  • Alessandro Ludovico, ed., UBERMORGEN.COM – Media Hacking vs. Conceptual Art, Christoph Merian Verlag, Basel, 2009, ISBN 978-3856164607.
  • Yukiko Shikata and UBERMORGEN.COM, "From Somebody's Desire to Everyone's Responsibility", in Georg Russegger, Matthias Tarasiewicz and Michal Wlodkowski, eds., Coded Cultures: New Creative Practices out of Diversity, Edition Angewandte, SpringerWienNewYork, 2011, ISBN 978-3-7091-0457-6, pp. 334–355.
  • This is a magazine, Pink Laser Beam, Compendium #6, 2009. Includes material on the Amazon Noir project with Alessandro Ludovico and Paolo Cirio.

See also

  • Internet art
  • Net.art
  • Software art
  • Tactical media
  • Media activism
  • Institutional critique
  • The Yes Men
  • etoy
  • monochrom

References

  • Official website
  • Injunction Generator
  • The Silver Singularity
  • UNINVITED