HausCode

Haus der Kunst invites digital and interdisciplinary creators worldwide to participate in HausCode, a new prototype for Creative Research and Development.

The programme draws new lines in contemporary art history and weaves projects into a narrative that evolves over time. It presents works that invite the public into layered systems of meaning, some visible, some less, some unfolding through time or repetition. HausCode extends this approach by supporting digital responses that engage with and reinterpret these structures, creating a new context to understand our increasingly digitalised world.

The annual open call addresses international applicants and encourages unconventional ways to engage with the programme, with no in-person presence required.

The inaugural cycle is centred on the exhibition “For Children: Art Stories since 1968”, which presents artworks conceived for children and approaches childhood as a space to reconsider forms of learning and institutional functioning.

Three contribution concepts have been selected based on their conceptual relationship with the exhibition “For Children” and Haus der Kunst’s vision, their engagement with the structures of childhood, and their use of digital media within the development period.

The selection committee included the Haus der Kunst direction, curatorial and digital communication staff, together with external experts in digital advisory and visual identity and design. Among dozens of applications worldwide, the finalists stood out for their clear and critical approach to the theme and the quality of their technical proposals. The three works reflect different perspectives and engage with systems of learning, play, and care through interactive sound, text-based, and gaming environments.

Instructions We Follow Without Being Asked is a childhood AI-based research project on how institutions shape behavior. In childhood, rules enter the body before they are explained, through repetition, atmosphere, instruction, and correction. The contribution will follow generative logic that allows language to repeat, shift, and re-combine, revealing patterns of instruction and care, when addressing institutional systems of teaching.

Photo: Naomi Morgan

Adaeze Okaro is a Nigerian visual artist working across photography and AI-based image making. Her work explores emotion, memory, and perception, with a focus on how people experience and interpret the world in different ways.

Lullabies for Machines is a web-based audiovisual contribution that gathers lullabies from many voices. Children and adults hum, sing, or murmur a lullaby into an online interface. A machine-learning system recomposes these recordings into a continuously evolving collective lullaby. Many voices, accents, and memories merge into one shared song.

Photo: Courtesy the artist

Fá Maria is a Portuguese, Berlin-based artist, composer, and researcher working at the intersection of voice, technology, and embodiment. Their practice examines how computational systems mediate intimacy, particularly how vocal practices are learned, transmitted, and transformed through cultural and technical frameworks.

School Pixel is based on a pixel typeface created from drawings made in a workshop by 130 schoolchildren in New Zealand – quirky, imperfect, and full of rule-breaking details. In an arcade-style game, players explore a mine of colour-coded pixel blocks, and can also create own levels with a simplified game editor. With a drillbot, they search for words and collect letters. The typeface becomes a landscape to move through.

Foto: ©miningrawletters

Mining Raw Letters (Nell May & Kevin Kuhn) is a Swiss-based type, design and research studio founded in 2025 by New Zealand type designer Nell May and German writer and developer Kevin Kuhn. They work where letters, language, research and code meet.

HausCode is an experimental annual initiative through which digital practitioners collaborate with and respond to the storytelling that unfolds through the artistic programme of Haus der Kunst, acting as a tool for engagement and learning in the digital sphere.

HausCode invites diverse creatives to “embody” the programme, becoming its sensory extensions and interpretive agents. These creators operate not as illustrators of curatorial ideas, but as independent agents who decode, critique, or reimagine the institution’s logic and narration from within. Contributors get exclusive glimpses behind the scenes of the exhibitions and institutional vision, and are invited to reveal and reinterpret the hidden structures, codes and rituals that govern artistic and institutional practice.

Creative contributions will serve as a research and interpretation tool that operates as a conceptual avatar of Haus der Kunst: a generative identity that expands and evolves through each cycle, shaped by the creators who engage with it.