Ambient Information Systems

Ambient Information Systems is comprised of artists Manu Luksch (born 1970, in Vienna) and Mukul Patel (born 1971, in Bombay). Together, and in collaboration with numerous others, they create projects that explore the changing nature of human relationships with information in the era of digital networks. Live data broadcasting and transmission comprise the theme, media, and space for many of Ambient Information Systems’s works, which take shape in installation, performance, documentary, dance, gastronomy, sound, and video. The intersections of social and technical infrastructures—such as access to information, privacy, and surveillance—are core issues for Ambient Information Systems; their work takes the form of collaborative media, community, and research-based projects informed by these ideas. Projects include: FACELESS (2007), a science fiction film composed entirely of closed circuit television images obtained via the UK Data Protection Act 1998; Voluptuously Blinking Eye (VBI) (2006), a curatorial lounge comprised of a directory of unscheduled broadcasts, a survey of illegal transmissions, and a reverse engineering of television broadcast technologies; Orchestra of Anxiety (2007), a participatory installation featuring instruments that use materials and technologies from surveillance industries. Participatory processes, creation of tools, and archiving and documentation are significant aspects of Ambient Information Systems’s recent projects.