H33333333333K

!Mediengruppe Bitnik (read as “Not Mediengruppe Bitnik”) is a contemporary artist collective, whose artistic work focuses on the interconnections between the digital world and physical reality.

!Mediengruppe Bitnik deals with fundamental questions on issues of modern media and the post-internet generation by questioning structures and testing their application in unintended fields.

The resulting loss of control is no less welcome than the media group’s actual intention to produce its artistic interventions.

H33333333333K is an architectural manipulation of the façade of the “House of Electronic Arts Basel” (HeK) museum’s building.

The work translates the digital phenomenon of glitch – the unwelcome disturbance – directly into architectural form by adapting and rearranging elements of the existing structure of the façade. This public intervention transforms the temporary existence of the digital malfunction into a permanent distortion. The glitch relates the current art world, the market, the general conditions of art production and of course itself, the intrusion of coincidence and thus inaccuracy into an otherwise overly precise system of information and data transmission.

Who establishes the conditions for existence and creation of artworks in the digital world?

H33333333333K intervenes in the structure of the building by integrating a visual software error, a malfunction, directly into the solid material of the façade. The digital error becomes the real existing, i.e. tangible body in the city and pushes the boundaries between these worlds. The building facade gains surreal character through the offset of its elements. Through a filmic or photographic reproduction, the intervention acquires a bidirectional reference to its initial idea.

It is not by chance that the HeK is the venue of this conflict, as it merely reflects the spirit inside through the intervention outside. Since its early beginnings, the institution has been committed to a radically contemporary use of media within art.

The work was commissioned by the House of Electronic Arts Basel, the Christoph Merian Foundation and the Swisslos-Fund of Basel-Land and was inaugurated in 2015.