N3krozoft Ltd: 1904-2007 :: exhibition until January 27, 2008 :: Dubai Digital Art Centre (DUDAC), Dubai Internet City, United Arab Emirates :: Live performances: BLACKBOX:DXB November 30 - December 2, 2007 - Realtime video performance by the N3krozoft Media Ensemble, accompanied by the Dubai Chamber Orchestra :: KASPAROV 9000 :: December 7-9, 2007 - explores the confrontation between human and machine intelligence, based on the historical match between chess world champion Garry Kasparov and IBM’s software opponent Deep Blue in 1997.

About the exhibition: N3krozoft Ltd is one of the most challenging collective efforts in the field of media art. Building upon a lineage of continuous projects reaching back to the early days of the computer age, their work encompasses live visual performance, public art, and critique of software and its relationship to contemporary culture and politics. This major survey provides an unprecedented opportunity to reassess their ambiguous work, which is characterised by its obsessive subject matter and experimental approach to media and techniques.

Beginning with early videos, participatory works and performances, the exhibition showcases some of the group’s most influential multimedia pieces in an unprecedented, monumental installment. It also features a number of new works made specially for the exhibition. This exhibition explores N3krozoft’s core themes of technology, control and isolation, and demonstrates that the group continues to defy convention.

Entering the exhibit, the visitor delves into a dark space illuminated by a huge glass monolith, glowing with a radioactive green. This box contains an impressive holographic rendering of Albrecht Dürer’s Melancholia (an engraving from 1514), the result of a collaboration with Kyjuku Optics, a leader in high-precision laser technology. Through its unearthly presence, this sculpture functions as the nodal point of the whole exhibition, providing an enigmatic allegorical centerpiece.

Another holographic piece can be found in the next room, where the acclaimed video installation LOL (laughing out loud) is presented in a new scenic surrounding. The phantomatic silhouette of “ripper” - a teenager deceased during a drug-induced online chat session - floats above the scenery, while the log files of his last chat flicker on a translucent screen.

Beyond the presentation of classic multimedia pieces and artifacts from the N3krozoft group’s early years (including ONYX, NO SIGNAL and KERNEL PANIK), the exhibition features some new works, such as the video installation NULL+VOID, which offers a breathtaking ride through video-streams captured in realtime from anonymous internet webcams. The viewer is also offered some glimpses of the long-term project UBIK, a “retro/avant-garde” science-fiction movie based on Philip K Dick’s cult novel. N3krozoft presents the latest segment, UBIK - Chapter 6, which was filmed in July 2007 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome.

In the last section of the exhibition, a comfortable video lounge, designed like a video surveillance control room, allows the visitor to browse through a selection of 128 titles, including music videos, live performances and other original items from the N3krozoft Archive.