[non-art works]
Buffering Love in a Hopeless Place
· sonic datastructure – programmed, synthesized, and processed by Igor Štromajer and his computers
Premiere: 7 May 2026 at 15:00 CEST / UTC+2
➠ Livestream
Station: radio x, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
FM / UKW 91.8 MHz
radia.fm production: miss.gunst [GUNST + radiator x]
Radio Show: radiator x
Duration: 28 min
radia.fm – new and forgotten ways of making radio
show #1100
— on air from May 2026
Editor: Verena Kuni
└⦿✚⦿┘
DE-ALGO ID #01000110
De-Algorithmized Identity No. 01000110
by Igor Štromajer
[test exhibition]
📍 forest
8-28 February 2026
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.
Timing: The timing, February, is critical. The transitional state of the flora, the cold atmosphere, and the lingering patches of snow among the mud and dampness provide a neutral, non-decorative backdrop. Rather than standing in contrast to its surroundings, the object integrates into this grey light and saturation. It dissolves into the void of the late-winter forest, becoming a seamless part of the landscape’s stillness and material weight.
– 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, the 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.
– 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.
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.
Igor Štromajer
3¦×Fń–Qé3=Miá+
-oµ4×
one hundred and one poems
co-written by a human and a machine
The poems were generated between 2013 and 2018 by semi-automatic conversion of .jpg and .gif image files from the author’s deleted net art works [1996-2007; 2011] into text form using the Unicode Encoding Standard.
Kibla, Maribor, 2024
112 pages
softcover, thread-sewn
The joint library of ZKM | Center for Art and Media and the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design (HfG) – Katalog der Bibliothek von ZKM und HfG Karlsruhe:
➠ ZKM Online-Catalog (OPAC)
Acquisition: since March 2025, the book has been part of the permanent collection of the Maribor Art Gallery.
You’re a human and you can’t read Unicode poems by yourself? No worries, sit back and relax, the computer does it for you.
Igor Štromajer, co-poet · sopesnik · Mitdichter
· contact: igor [at] netzkunst [dot] berlin
publisher
ACE KIBLA
Maribor, 2024
represented by
Peter Tomaž Dobrila
TOX Edition, Vol. 29, Nr. 78
ISBN 978-961-6304-56-6
UDC 821.163.6-1
human texts revision
Danica Zlatar, Emil Pečnik
design and layout
Joško Bohunsky
producer
Peter Lubej
print
Demago
500 copies
support
The Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia
Municipality of Maribor
Koda Modro
X-OP
The publication is part of the project 3¦×Fń–Qé3= Miá+ (2012-2024).
aₚ=tF²
Štromajer‘s latest series on memory and dead tech: 101.72 MB – electrical machines, computers, phones and other digital devices and their parts that once produced, processed, transmitted and stored his net ⁿᵒⁿ⁻art works (motherboards, sound and graphics cards, disks and magnetic tapes, fans, keyboards, chips, processors, cables, etc.), but are now partially or completely dead, no longer performing their basic functions, carrying only a physical memory of them.
These dead machines are part of the author’s intimate history, the memory which serves to mislead, betray and misrepresent, instead of describing the past. A false memory, however, does not offer an authentic image of the past it speaks of, but always only a misleading, deceptive, fictional and distorted, falsified image.
Like software, hardware is also changing rapidly, continuously and inexorably, losing its functionality, purpose and, consequently, its content – the (non-)art itself. The author’s basic premise here is that (non-)art is not only hidden in the concept, the idea, i.e., not only in the nominal and declared, but equally also in the tools and machines that produce it. That is why the parts of machines, now more or less dead, are full of intimate memories that have faded and stories that have died.
The series is part of Štromajer‘s de-digitalization processes over several years, from the deletion of his net ⁿᵒⁿ⁻art works back in 2011 to the present.
The only way to liberate ourselves from feudal techno-capitalism is through collective and total de-digitalization.
The title of the work indicates the amount of now deleted net ⁿᵒⁿ⁻art works (101.72 MB of files) produced and processed by these machines and their parts between 1996 and 2007: intima.org/ex.
de-digitalization ≠ re-analogization
20 items / dimensions:
· 52 × 52 × 6 cm (6 x)
· 37 × 37 × 6 cm (8 x)
· 27 × 27 × 6 cm (2 x)
· 12 × 12 × 3 cm (4 x)
(dead objects under clear glass, white wooden frames)
Oppera Teorettikka Internettikka
· created and performed by Igor Štromajer
(singing HTML and Java in English and Slovenian language)
· a version with remastered sound, February 2024
18 March 1999
Opera and Ballet of the Slovene National Theatre in Ljubljana
18 March 2024 marks the 25th anniversary of Oppera Teorettikka Internettikka, performed in 1999 on the stage of the Opera and Ballet of the Slovene National Theatre in Ljubljana.
Previously, Štromajer first sang the Oppera at the SeaFair – Skopje Electronic Arts Fair at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Skopje (at the invitation of Melentie Pandilovski) in 1998, and at the transmediale in Berlin in January 1999 (at the invitation of Tilman Baumgärtel; in Kulturzentrum Podewil).
· audio recorded live by Borut Savski (ministry:of:x-periment) and aired on Radio Študent
· produced by Anatom, co-produced by Intima Virtual Base and Kapelica Gallery
· camera by Jurij V. Krpan, photo by Igor Delorenzo Omahen; special thanks to Bojana Kunst, Nataša Kos, Borut Smrekar
Le Pavarotti du HTML – Le Slovene Stromajer crée des opéras en code web; par Marie Lechner (le vendredi 2 février 2001, Libération, Paris)
intima.org · Igor Štromajer 