Florian Meisenberg shows us his digital
footprint and challenges the viewers to
think about their own digital traces and their personal handling of media.

The artist Florian Meisenberg (*1980) has generated a self-portrait from personal digital data that can be viewed online at the SCHIRN homepage. The digital art project conceived exclusively for the SCHIRN bears the title “Out of Office (I used to be 'with it', but then they changed what 'it' was. Now what I’m with isn’t 'it', and what’s 'it' seems weird and scary to me.)” (2016).

The self-portrait consists of a GPS-tracked motion and communication profile of the artist and his personal image material. All of the data are rendered graphically according to a specific algorithm. Viewers can follow Meisenberg via a timeline and track where he is, when he makes an online purchase, how often he uses Google or writes a WhatsApp message, and what pictures he takes. What develops is an intimate contemporary self-portrait of the artist.

Concurrent with the digital self-portrait, Meisenberg is presenting an installation by the same name, “Out of Office” (2016), in the Schirn exhibition “]∂” in which his smartphone is streamed 1:1 onto a large screen so that visitors to the exhibition can follow Meisenberg’s communication in real time.

TO THE EXHIBITION