Mission

In the FUNKEN Academy, artists, technological institutes and research facilities come together to experiment in the field between arts and technology. Since 2020, various workshops have been held with different partners from the fields of research and art.

We live in a time characterized by technology and the idea of progress, a time full of transformation which is invisible to the vast majority of society. Although the societal effects of digitization and automation can be felt by all of us, the underlying process is no longer perceptible, yet shapes the way we live and interact.

The increasingly rapid developments in the fields of nanotechnology, biotechnology, synthetic biology, augmented reality, artificial intelligence and many more will become one of the greatest challenges for society in the coming decades in terms of ethics and values. Technology and science are not only changing our environment, but our bodies and our behaviors. The transformation from an industrial to a digital society, in which robots and autonomous systems take over production, supervision and creation and processes are increasingly automated, lead to potential improvements of living but also uncertainties entailing fears for the future.

High-tech institutes are breaking new ground every day in the technical field. Their research and innovations are built on digital progress, as for example conceived on the basis of ever smaller sensors and more powerful computer chips and new technologies like virtual modeling. Artists, on the other hand, usually only gain access to these technologies once they have been incorporated into products.

Our project is intended to enable artists to carry out long-needed mediation work, to make complex processes and technologies easily accessible. Change is not brought about through information, technology and science alone, but through experiments generating ideas that precede and accompany the change.