Exhibition View: Monkeys, Machines, and Multiperspectivities

The exhibition Monkeys, Machines, and Multiperspectivities is a call to embrace the transformative power of play. As visitors moved through the experimental landscape, they were able to encounter new perspectives, rethink their roles in the world, and explore how small shifts in perspective can unlock vast potential for creative and collective action. Through this dynamic intersection of art, science, and play, the project offered a vision of a future defined by empathy, interconnectedness, and the endless possibilities of the ludic mind.

In the form of a specially developed seond- order exhibition the artists and scientists of the Psycholudic/Robopsy Research Group led by principal investigator (PI) Margarete Jahrmann (Experimental Game Cultures) observe themselves as researchers and artists in play, and interact with everyday players visiting this show. They describe and reflect on a subtle new approach to experimental game design, using the ludic method, psychophysics, cognitive psychology and neuroscience in a combination that they coin the Psycho-Ludic Approach.

What if we change the perspective of research? What if we twist research methods on ecological, political and social realities through experiences of experimental play? What happens to collective memory when we play with AI? Watch the open (game) engine of collaborations between art, neuroscience, cognitive psychology, literature and experimental game art and play. Let’s explore alternative motivations to play — to win or rather not to win!

The researchers and artists invite you to experience transmissions from inside brains in play, artistic research in experimental play, and minds in critical engagement. We challenge conventional ideas of nature, world, human, and non-human through a critical view on agency. How can we think beyond the human-centric perspective? Even if a purely rational understanding of the role of non-human beings in our world were possible, this would not satisfy our longing for a subjective and empathic sense of what it might be like to be such a being. There may be a solution that is much more deeply rooted than human culture, which has been superseded by seemingly rational practices such as research, inquiry and science. That solution is Play!

Each work of the exhibition originates from the re- search projects listed below and a few are still in the development or in process due to your participatory involvement.

Participating artistic researchers:
Thomas Brandstetter, Stefan Glasauer, Clara Hirschmanner, Margarete Jahrmann, Talos Kedl, Louise Linsenbolz, Georg
Luif, Stefan Maier, Barbi Markovic, Max Moswitzer, Fabian Navarro, Tamas Páll, Thomas Wagensommerer, and Experimental Game Cultures & citizen science/student/ everyday life experts