Teaching
Anke Eckardt combines her ongoing artistic processes with her teaching activities, whether through common themes or differing experiments with a particular material or medium, so that art and teaching can build on each other. In this way, she provides students with access to contemporary artistic perspectives and working methods and, conversely, enters into a reflective exchange with the next generation on current social issues and aesthetic questions.
Former main topics (selection):
- 2014-2017 Innovative Material Systems / Intelligent Surfaces (University of Kassel)
- 2017-2021 Expanded Materialities in Art (e.g. ephemeral materials and processes as material, Academy of Media Arts Cologne/KHM)
Ongoing main topic:
Since 2024, the critical examination of Artificial Intelligence/AI has been a focus of Anke Eckardt’s teaching. In her courses “AI Tragedy” and “Dimension and Space” at the University of Music and Performing Arts / Kunstuniversität Graz, Anke Eckardt examines, questions and reflects on the possibilities and limits of AI in art and music together with students.
Research
Anke Eckardt continuously researches new technologies, looking for synergies with artistic processes. She contributes to current discourses in the form of collaborative research projects and publications.
Former main topics (selection):
- 2014-2017: BAU KUNST ERFINDEN (material research platform, University of Kassel)
- 2017-2020: Materiathek (research project on extended materialities, KHM Cologne)
- 2022-2023: Artistic Adviser for the NRW Female Artist Prize 2022 Digital Art, curation of a blog on the spectrum of digital transformations in art and society
Ongoing research focus: Research on new media since 2017, with a particular focus on AI. Comparable to the paradigm shifts brought about by new technologies in the past (railroad, radio, telephone, television, internet), AI seems to be the paradigm shift of our time, bringing a technological, information-theoretical and communicative transformation. Research into AI and its impacts therefore appears to be a necessary examination of the conditions of our time:
Publications: Teil 1: Frühe Formen von Künstlicher Intelligenz Teil 2: Transformationen
AI Tragedy
Kunstuniversität Graz, teaching project and resulting student exhibitions in Summer/Fall 2024
AI Tragedy at esc medien kunst labor Graz (06.-13.09.2024)
AI Tragedy MUMUTH Kunstuniversität Graz (02.10.2024)
The course on tragedy within AI was held by Prof. Anke Eckardt in summer 2024 at the Kunstuniversität Graz, offered to students from various departments. Artistic approaches ranging from performance to media installation and sculpture were created within this framework. The resulting works were presented to the public in two exhibitions.
In their classical form, which goes back to Ancient Greece and Greek-inhabited Anatolia, tragic plots were mostly based on myths from the oral tradition of archaic epics – in which humans competed against gods. In comparison, Shakespeare’s tragedies, for example, are characterized by the political conditions of the Elizabethan age. What both have in common is that the tragedy deals with power struggles between various entities. A thought experiment: how could such a power struggle be described today with regard to the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) as a normative tool, which leads to a difficult-to-understand social, communicative and information-theoretical change in a variety of social areas?
Seven students from the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, coming from the disciplines of computer music and sound art, stage design as well as technical and textile design, demystify AI by dealing with tragic aspects of the tool in their artistic projects. These range from a continuing lack of awareness of the technical singularity of AI in the near future, to facets of dehumanization and the ecological footprint of AI, to the desirable and dystopian potentials of the tool. New tools have always been developed by those who already had greater resources at their disposal. It could be argued that a tragic aspect of the governance of AI is that those with the most influence over the regulation of AI have the least interest in doing so; while those with the most interest have the least influence.

Sculptural work with AI generated moving images
Kunstuniversität Graz, teaching project for the department of Stage Design, Winter 2024/2025
Stills and moving images from:
Yvonne Beck, Henrik Erich Leonard_Erdödy, Imelda Kuntner, Emanuel Krizic, Stephanie Sophie Ortner, Lola Helena Rainer, Lätizia Stuhlbacher, Lukas Traxler, Elisa Weiß
The experiments shown in the pictures and videos were realized in fall 2024 at the Kunstuniversität Graz as part of “Dimension und Raum”, a course offered for the department of Stage Design. Some students from the department of “Computer Music and Sound Art” joined as well. The seminar was held by Prof. Anke Eckardt.
Within this year’s “Dimension und Raum” the focus was on practical work with time-based, audiovisual artificial intelligence software such as Midjourney, Runway, Kaiber Studio and D-ID. What possibilities and limits emerge, what potential do these programs offer for artistic work? Based on work samples, we discuss topics such as authorship and ethical dimensions of virtual realities. The students experiment with projecting their moving image content on a three-dimensional object.