Who is the clever mind behind “AIVA”, the absolutely incredible AI novelty that everyone talks about and wants to have? An avatar with a female voice, unfolding in two dimensions like a pattern, praises their successful multi-million-pound project. Answers are not provided, just another ghastly feedback loop of artificiality.

The truth is hidden behind blurs, but the allure of secrecy fades as the clarity increases. A woman in love ventures out of her cocoon to go out into the mundane world of “dead language.” Accompanied by a restless musical motif by Marian Mentrup, “Achill” boldly balances on the thin line between two universes – with raw, intimate drawings, shimmering stones and overpainted video sequences.

AIVA is an artist animated by algorithms. But first and foremost, she is the tech vision of male IT commitment to more diversity in the arts. Which is why AIVA prefers the “portrait” format in her paintings. An “art documentary” lets us share her creative process and fulfils every stereotype at hand. With unerring wit, Veneta Androva mirrors actual conditions in her computer animated science fiction.

Painting, virtual sculptures, technophile hybrids of reality and illusion – Aaron Jablonski has been creating mobile face filters for social media channels since 2018. Sometimes they form a confusing swarm of echoes around a head, sometimes they come as spiky digital punk. His immaterial masks, hovering between fashion and art, conceal as much as they reveal about their wearers.

Most accidents happen at home. That is where a jazz-loving drawn figure is unexpectedly re-confronted with a text by Bertolt Brecht that brings an appeal to their own political responsibility. Something at least must be done to avoid ending up on the wrong side. A trenchant, tidy contemplation that shows some understanding for human indecision.

“I know you” is easier said than “I know myself.” Here, someone probes their own fear in a childlike voice and sketchy images. There are certain pieces of evidence, like the shovel used by a young woman to dig a deep hole. And there is that black thing that grabs her soul like a spider. A cautious and curious mutual approach in sometimes concrete, sometimes abstract ink drawings.

A woman’s voice shouts and whispers her wishes, depending on how she feels and what she wants. Her cartoonishly reduced and exaggerated body dances compromise out of the world. Straight, zig-zag or in sweeping curves, on we go through the hustle and bustle of life. Anne Isensee formulates an enthusiastic wake-up call for self-determination and lust for life.

During a ramble through the forest we see video colour fringes break through the shadows of the canopy. Rolls of thunder and birdsong spread as a deep red pixel moss carpet. Ambient sounds creep up from the distance to filter the visual world. Hallucinogenic data errors drag like scrapers across a discarded layer of paint. The forest becomes a cathedral for the eyes and ears.

A city crossing: Many things happen, one after the other, at the same time and sometimes inexplicable. Even in animated images reduced almost to symbols there is a lot to discover at this place. A speaker describes what is happening in words for people with visual impairments, but she increasingly questions the meaningfulness and translatability of what she sees.

An infrared dot pattern scans body shapes to supply system information for fascinating volume images. The space casts are virtual sculptures, mouldable, with unstable aggregate states. DJ Dixon’s “Transmoderna” performance is pulverized to the beats of Mëhill’s track “Through Withdrawals”: waves of millions of luminescent coloured microbodies against a black infinity.

Sometimes it really takes only two minutes to see through life. In her minimalist animated film, Anne Isensee comes quickly and straightforwardly to the point. What the direct line sketches out as a concept of life looks alluring, too. It is a good thing that there are one or two kinks after all. Nonchalant, witty and profound – and awarded the Golden Dove at DOK Leipzig in 2017.

A colourful luminous river flows through the black void. Geometrical surfaces dance in small repeating loops around wondrous organic plants. The abstract lines, rectangles and semicircles briefly form animated figures. Tina Turner’s classic in the musical interpretation of Miles Davis and the animated visual world of Irina Rubina and Michelle Brand.

Ginkgo trees are separated by sex; only the female trees bear fruit. Once highly esteemed as natural sources of health, city dwellers today object to their pungent smell and, as gardeners, prefer the less complicated, more fragrant “fruitless” male plants. Tang Han explains with infographics, apt short sound comments and sympathetic objectivity.

A virtual tour of a computer-generated desert landscape and a story of failure: In 1998, the “Oasis”, Palestine’s first casino, opened. The peace-making idea associated with this development project lost out against political reality. Game over – the oasis becomes a multifaceted fata morgana of interviews with employees, operators and guests.

An investigative examination of the colour spaces of the 100 Yuan note reveals a paradigm shift. Officially declared by the central bank to be red, the note bearing the portrait of Mao is, physically speaking, actually pink. This has consequences for China’s political narrative, as Tang Han’s uncompromisingly precise and refreshingly clever cinematic experimental setup illustrates.

Our hovering gaze circles a free-standing rock on a wide plain. The recording gets stuck. At ever shorter intervals the massive rock formation breaks out of the solidifying background until data smears and artefacts accumulate as fine digital sediment layers and congeal into new formations. The video signal interference acts like a primal force of geological history.