bios [bible], 2007/2010
Those who visited the Admont Abbey Library as part of the exhibition "PLAY ADMONT . regionale10" in 2010 unexpectedly encountered a massive industrial robot there. This robot, using a quill pen, handwrote the New Testament onto a large paper roll over the course of a few months..
With precision, the machine executed the calligraphic lines, gradually bringing the text to life, much like a monk in a monastery scriptorium. The massive appearance of the robot, its movements, and sounds affected the observer, eliciting individual interpretations and evoking ideas that could lie within the realms of both practical implementation and the utopia of a possible human-machine culture.
"Bios [Bible]" is an installation by the independent artist group Robotlab (Matthias Gommel, Martina Haitz, Jan Zappe), founded in 2000 and associated with the Institute for Visual Media at the ZKM - Center for Art and Media Technology in Karlsruhe. "Bios [Bible]" deals with questions of faith and technological progress. The arrangement juxtaposes two fundamental systems in Western society: the Christian religion and scientific rationalism. In this context, the medium of writing has always played a special role, both as sacred scripture and as a formal record of knowledge.
In computer technology, the Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) refers to the component that coordinates the interaction between hardware and software, thus containing the indispensable fundamental software that enables any computer to start up and process information. It essentially includes that initial program, that first causal script, upon which every subsequent program builds.
The paper scroll created during the writing process in the Admont Abbey Library was added to the collection of the Admont Abbey.