maschine – mensch


'Tobias Zucali Tobias Zucali / 'Christopher Rhomberg Christopher Rhomberg

maschine-mensch is a project in which a computer reduces a human being to the status of a module hooked up to a machine. Computer-controlled electrical muscle stimuli deprive the human being of control over his own muscles. The human thus becomes the slave of the system that he had originally designed—a perversion of the human-machine relationship.

Over the course of human development, mankind has designed and constructed machines in order to exploit their productive capabilities. The machine’s speed, the when and how of its operation, have always been determined by men. At the same time, though, humans have had no other choice but to subordinate themselves to the dictates of these repetitive, endlessly monotonous mechanical rhythms that men themselves set in motion.

What’ll man do when he's controlled by the machine he himself created, when his subservience is completely his own doing?
What’ll man do when he no longer has dominion over the machine but is instead reduced to its slave?
What’ll man do when the machine ignores his will as something of no particular importance?
What’ll man do when he’s exploited by the machine as a tool? When his muscle-power is all that is of importance to the machine, and the rest is regarded as merely insignificant or, at most, a disruptive appendage?
When nothing that essentially defines man’s humanity is of any remaining importance or relevance—neither will nor intellect?
Mankind will be relegated to the status of mob, to working trash, to a freely interchangeable replacement part. maschine-mensch is a project that takes this fundamental principle about as far as it’ll go.