Conceived as a research project in the Oldenburg region, the exhibition Discrete Farms at the Edith-Russ-Haus for Media Art explored the relationship between humans and animals in the digital age. In doing so, it brought into focus a powerful and lobbying-driven sector of the Lower Saxony economy.

At the center of the work complex Factory≠Farm is Bauer Kyber Opsroom, a control room that prototypically represents a fully automated, programmable farm. The installation combines industrial technologies from factory farming systems with the romanticized image of a traditional farm. The farmer’s cabinet, painted with icons from livestock control software, reveals the technological contradiction.

Through a control unit connected to six monitors, a computer simulation of a poultry farm is displayed, where 50,000 chickens are fattened within 30 days. The graphics are based on standard control software but also visualize the “wetware” in the barn: 50,000 chickens represented as triangles move between feeding troughs and water lines, while status indicators display their health, weight, and hunger. Red triangles indicate animals that have “perished” before the cycle ends. At the end of the cycle, the triangles are systematically deleted, and the barn is refilled with new triangles, beginning the next cycle.

2012 Painted farmer’s cabinet, farmhouse furniture, computer control unit and monitors, real-time simulation of a poultry fattening facility, Video: Rabbits –