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DE-ALGO ID #01000110
De-Algorithmized Identity No. 01000110
by Igor Štromajer
[test exhibition]
📍 forest
8-28 February 2026

Forest Intervention

Location & Context: The exhibition is situated deep within a forest, positioned at one of the rotating axis of Europe, where human presence is rare to non-existent, characterized by a lack of infrastructure, the absence of maintained paths, and an a-semiotic indifference to human-centric art protocols.

The Object: The central element is a de-digitalized sculptural installation derived from Štromajer‘s social media profile picture. Since 2014, he has used various iterations of the same profile image across all his social media accounts.

– Materiality: The image has been translated into a sculpture, a three-dimensional, analog form using industrial materials.

– Scale: The proportions are calibrated to exist in a 1:1 ratio with the surrounding environment, ensuring the object integrates into the forest landscape rather than dominating it.

Spatial Configuration

– Placement: The sculpture is positioned within a cluster of non-human entities and indifferent, non-artistic matter (trees, rocks, undergrowth). Its placement mimics the formal logic of an exhibition space but is fundamentally devoid of any artistic infrastructure. To the forest, Štromajer‘s sculpture is not a work of art, but merely another object with a specific mass and temperature. A tree does not touch it with admiration, it rubs against it simply because it occupies space. Indifferent matter does not attempt to read the sculpture. To a rock, this object means nothing. This silence, this total unresponsiveness of the environment to artistic intent, is what definitively de-digitalizes the sculpture. When matter is indifferent, the object finally becomes autonomous. It no longer needs to perform. In a gallery, the object is a slave to the visitor’s gaze. In an indifferent forest, it simply is.

– Duration: The exhibition is active for a period of three weeks. This specific window represents a temporary rupture in the forest’s routine.

– Access: There are no markers, signs, or directions provided.

– Absence of Protocol: The exhibition does not have an opening or a designated viewing protocol for human visitors, nor does it provide one for non-human entities. It does not seek an audience, it merely occupies space.

– Connectivity / The Post-Functional Object: The object is intentionally built to be non-conductive and disconnected. It is a dead node in a live field. It exists in a state of terminal duration. While mobile signals may permeate the forest air, the object is structurally deaf to them.

Non-Human Interaction

The exhibition is structured to exist primarily for the environment, without the requirement of being seen.

– Analog Persistence: The object exists in a state of total disconnect from the human feedback loop. It stands as a physical remainder of a digital identity that has ceased to transmit, in a space that no longer requires interpretation.

From Binary Identity to Silent Entropy

The exhibition DE-ALGO ID #01000110 represents a strategic ontological shift from binary identity to silent entropy.

Entropy as Information Exit

In this context, entropy is not understood as the physical decay of a sculpture in the forest. Rather, it is the transition from a digital state (ordered, networked, and indexed) to an analog state (autonomous, silent, and material). Digital identity is a trap of high-order organization, it is a slave to the algorithm. By translating the profile picture into a three-dimensional industrial object and placing it in an a-semiotic environment, the image undergoes an entropic transformation. It loses its bit-value and gains mass-value. It is no longer a signal, it is a noise that the network can no longer filter. Its duration is its only performance.

The Rejection of the Human Gaze

Art made for humans is a structural error born of anthropocentric narcissism. The current gallery-museum complex is merely a feedback loop for human validation. By placing the sculpture deep within a forest, the work systematically excludes the human consumer. This is a deliberate de-algorithmization of the self. If the digital profile is meant to be seen and liked, this analog sculptural iteration is meant to be ignored. Visibility is a digital trap, silence is an analog choice.

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The Genealogy of De-digitalization: Ritual, Material, and Code

De-digitalization, the transition from the binary to the analog, is not a sudden pivot, but the next stage of a long-term tactical withdrawal from the digital field. This process is defined by three distinct phases of erasure and translation:

– The Ritual Deletion (Expunction):

In 2011, the project Expunction established the fundamental premise: the right to create is inextricably linked to the right to delete. By ritually expunging 101.72 MB of net art, 37 projects produced over a decade, the work moved from the screen to the archive of absence. This was not an act of destruction, but a recognition of the natural cycle of birth and death within technical systems. Since digital memory is inherently fraudulent, a deceptive, fabricated image of the past, erasure is the only path to an authentic state. The empty slot and the documentation of what is no longer there tell more about the original than the digital file ever could.

– The Material Remains (Dead Tech):

The process continued with the physical interrogation of hardware. The series 101.72 MB (2024) treated motherboards, processors, and magnetic tapes not as tools, but as vessels of intimate, fading memories. These dead machines once processed and transmitted the very art that was deleted in 2011. Now, they are stripped of their functionality. Like the software they once ran, the hardware is inexorably losing its purpose. This stage of de-digitalization posits that art exists not only in the concept but in the physical tools: when the tool dies, the art enters a state of material persistence, no longer performing for the user.

– The Code Translation (Unicode Poetry):

The poems (1996-2007; 2011/2024) served as a bridge between the binary and the analog through semi-automatic conversion. By transforming .jpg and .gif fragments of deleted works into the Unicode Encoding Standard, the image was forced into text. This was a deliberate attempt to liberate information from the clutches of techno-capitalist structures. The resulting poems are analog leftovers, the visual reduced to the symbolic, the pixel reduced to a character, preparing the way for the final transition into physical mass.