Artist Statement

Drone Garden is a contemplative noninteractive installation, showing a network of microcontrollers fighting for bandwidth in a network using basic electronic warfare strategies. Their behavior is surveilled by a computer program that runs on a machine which is also part of this network. The installation forms a utopical technogene garden whose “plants” are independent electronic agents and its aesthetics is derived from computerforensic analysis as conducted in IT security laboratories. The microcontrollers are fighting for resources like plants are competing for sunlight while they are floating in beaker glasses filled with a liquid just like young plants that are put into water for acceleration of growth.
The installation is challenging the contemporary issue of electronic warfare (cyberwar) and reframes it as an intrinsic and important feature of a global communication network by exposing the inherent security flaws of the network protocols used worldwide. Drone Garden is furthermore addressing the question of naturality of a technogene system, understanding survival as an indicator for life and therefore raises the question of an ethical framework for our human interaction with the closed network system as well as the emergence of a universal machine ethics.

• Martin Reiche, Independent artist at Studio Martin Reiche Berlin, Germany cargocollective.com/martinreiche/About-Martin-Reiche-Imprint