Tobias Kurpat

👾Beyond the Meat – Avatars, NPCs, and Cyborg Bodies 👾 Module V of Game Lab explored how physical bodies can be translated into digital environments. Participating students created 3D scans of themselves and implemented them in Unity as avatars or NPCs, experimenting with animation, simple interactions, and motion capture tools to bring characters to life. Alongside the technical work, the workshop also encouraged reflection on how digital bodies reshape ideas of identity and presence in virtual spaces. #unlearningdigitalities #hgbleipzig #costsofdisconnecting Photos: Meghan Smith and Eliza Goldox

👾Game Lab Module V👾 Beyond the Meat – Avatars, NPCs, and Cyborg Bodies with @tkurpat April 9, 2026 | 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM, HGB, room: tba 🚨 Registration until 07.04. - send an e-mail to [email protected] In this module, we generate 3D scans of our own bodies and integrate them into Unity as either playable avatars or non-playable characters (NPCs). We will explore the animation of digital bodies and examine how NPCs influence the level design and atmosphere of playable worlds through simple interactions. Additionally, we will look at AI-powered tools that allow us to translate our physical movements onto virtual characters (Motion Capture). Throughout this process, we address a central question: How do digital representations reshape our notions of presence and identity within virtual spaces? #unlearningdigitalities #hgbleipzig #becomingpublics graphics: Marie Walser and Naomi Frank

📓✧˖°.As guests at the „Mensch & KI“ Forum at the Leipzig Book Fair, students presented their work to a wide audience. In the lecture performance ALUCINATIONS - Artistic Re-Appropriations of AI, they unveiled AI as a cultural and infrastructural actor, offering artistic and critical perspectives on technology, history, memory, and power structures. Photos by @____fabianlehmann

Transit 40x60cm screenprint on paper, 3 colours Edition 25 + 5 AP 2026 still some left, dm if interested Produziert für die Ausstellung der Rakelbande zum diesjährigen HGB Rundgang, großen Dank an @petranatascha.mehler und @kassandras_silk Fotografiert von @felixpacholleck Eine Ausstellung mit @simonjaramillovallejo @janaehls @_marla_vita_ @kassandras_silk @cosmoooli @janlessmann.xyz @qiuning_zhu @mika_plutitsky Anita Olarescu

Leipziger Buchmesse: 𓏲ּ𝄢 A͎L͎U͎C͎I͎N͎A͎T͎I͎O͎N͎S͎ –͎ A͎r͎t͎i͎s͎t͎i͎c͎ R͎e͎-͎A͎p͎p͎r͎o͎p͎r͎i͎a͎t͎i͎o͎n͎s͎ o͎f͎ A͎I͎ 𓏲ּ𝄢 Lecture Performance with Tobias Kurpat, Mio Al-Hashimy, Sijo Choi Kim, Sun Zhengke and Jiayi Li (organised with Eliza Goldox) 📍March 20, 2026 Leipziger Buchmesse/ Forum KI & Mensch, Halle 2, B601/C600, 1:00–2:10 p.m. As part of the Leipzig Book Fair/Forum KI&Mensch, (Un)learning Digitalities brings together artistic positions by students that do not view AI as a neutral tool, but rather as a hallucination, a resistant system, an instrument for re-narration and re-historicization, a metaphor, and a humanized system. The artists use AI specifically to generate alternative narratives, reorder collective and individual memories, and critically question existing power structures as well as normative and historical narratives. The four positions within the lecture performance consider the intertwining of technology, artistic imagination, and infrastructure as a political field of action. Algorithms, self-trained models, fine-tuning, motion capture, and 3D processes act as operative agents. Infrastructure is not understood as an invisible framework, but as a formative, effective factor that shapes, reproduces, and transforms social order, collectivity, and social dynamics. #unlearningdigitalities #hgbleipzig #costsofdisconnecting Cover graphics: Marie Walser Cover image: Sijo Choi Kim, The Garden of Algorithm Angels, 2024, Video still Slide 2: Sijo Choi Kim, The Garden of Algorithm Angels, 2024, Video still Slide 3: Zhengke Sun and Jiayi Li, Studie über Hof für Pachteinnahme – unendliches Beobachten, 2026 Slide 4: © OMNES VISION, Simón Jaramillo Vallejo & Tobias Kurpat, un-build Slide 5: DARPA Seeks Proposals for OFFSET Program’s Fourth Swarm Sprint. Provided by DARPAtv. YouTube, 1. April 2019. /watch?v=28u0fZntouU.

Mirrorball II Oil on canvas 100 x 150 cm 2025 and @k______h______u______f______ Rundgang Installation un/common ground Concrete, wood, steel 2026

Starting this Thursday: 𝒢𝒜𝑀𝐸 𝐿𝒜𝐵 𝑀𝒪𝒟𝒰𝐿𝐸 𝐼𝒱 𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 22.& 23.1., 10:00a.m. – 4:00p.m., HGB room K49 (basement, opposite the 3D printing workshop) On Thursday and Friday, the final module of the Game Lab with @tkurpat will take place as part of (Un)Learning Digitalities and in cooperation with the Studio of Digital Materialities. This module focuses on the possibilities of creating interactive installations with Unity and provides a broader overview of tools and creative coding. You are warmly invited to join this open format - feel free to bring along your own workflows, projects, or sketches. #unlearningdigitalities #hgbleipzig #costsofdisconnecting Graphics: Marie Walser Images: Eliza Goldox, Naomi Frank and Meghan Smith

Material Test Scene Oil on Canvas, based on „Blender Material Preview Scene“ by Robin Marín, licensed under CC BY 4.0. 200 x 200 cm 2025 This painting transforms the „Material Preview Scene“ into the physical permanence of oil painting. The Whole Earth Catalog’s promise of „Access to Tools“ has long been co-opted by Silicon Valley’s anarcho-capitalism. In this landscape, @blender.official stands as a radical counter-model: a return to the genuine Open Source utopia, free from corporate interests. . . . #oilpainting #contemporaryart #blender3d

Es ist endlich soweit: In dieser Woche publizierten wir als krönenden Abschluss den Siegeressay des Eisvogel-Preises für radikale Essayistik 2025. Er stammt von dem Leipziger Künstler Tobias Kurpat. Auch er betrachtet das "Barbarentum", das die Neue Rechte und die "Tech Bros" des Silicon Valley inszenieren, als bloßes Spektakel der Barbarei, dem er, vorsichtig, eine linksnietzscheanische Haltung der authentischen Schöpfung entgegenhält: "Die Barbarei unserer Gegenwart ist daher eben nicht das rohe Außen, sondern das subtile Innen". Wir denken, er hat sich mit diesem tiefschürfenden Essay diese Auszeichnung redlich verdient und gratulieren herzlich! Der Link zum Text: https://www.nietzsche-poparts.ch/posts/der-ubermensch-im-hamsterrad Schon Mitte Januar soll übrigens die neue Ausschreibung publiziert werden. Seid gespannt! (Die Credits zu den Bildern findet ihr im Artikel.) #nietzsche #eisvogelpreis #barbaren #tobiaskurpat #digitalisierung #neuerechte #linksnietzscheanismus

Module II – ๑۞๑,¸¸,ø¤º°`°๑۩ ≋F≋r≋o≋m≋ ≋Z≋e≋r≋o≋ ≋t≋o≋ ≋G≋a≋m≋e≋ ≋S≋c≋e≋n≋e≋ ๑۩ ,¸¸,ø¤º°`°๑۞๑ - Introduction to Unity on Thursday & Friday, 13.11./14.11.2025 with @tkurpat . The students returned to the studio of @digitalmaterialities to continue transforming the HGB into an interactive, playable world. Using scans from Module I, including scans of the students themselves, the academy became a digital environment that players can now explore. The beginning was dedicated to hands-on Unity sessions, implementing features and developing the digitalized HGB, while the second day focused on reactive environments, creating immersive narratives and experimenting with worldbuilding with scanned bodies and architecture. A huge thank you to everyone for bringing their ideas to life and pushing the Game Lab further into uncharted digital territories! #unlearningdigitalities #hgbleipzig #costsofdisconnecting

˙𐃷˙Some impressions from the 👾 Game Lab – Module I: “The Academy as a Game World - Digital Archaeology with Polycam & Unity” led by @tkurpat and hosted by @digitalmaterialities . The first module invited participants to explore the HGB as a playable landscape. Over two days, the students practiced forms of digital archaeology, scanning the academy and surrounding spaces with Polycam, collecting fragments of spaces, textures, bodies, and landscape. Between photgrammety, point clouds and Gaussian splats, the building slowly transformed into a virtual terrain, a hybrid of physical and digital memory. In the Blender and Unity introductions, participants translated their scans into models, interactive prototypes, imagining new ways to navigate, inhabit, and recompose the architecture of the school and developing ideas. Thank you @mariecharlottelsner and @simonjaramillovallejo for showing their works and everyone else who joined and contributed to this inspiring and dynamic start of the Game Lab! We are looking forward Module II tomorrow! With @kimmmmaha @simonjaramillovallejo @gabrielcorredorfoto @_lea_hardock_ @mioalhashimy @zhengkesun

✮ GAME LAB ✮ Student Led Session with Tobias Kurpat (@tkurpat ) We warmly invite you to register for the Game Lab, consisting of four modules, happening with @digitalmaterialities !

The Game Lab offers a hands-on introduction to the creation of immersive worlds. Over the course of four two-day modules, students will learn to use tools such as Polycam (a 3D scanning app) and the Unity development platform, exploring how these can be integrated into their own artistic practice. The focus lies on the conceptualization and realization of narrative environments and on examining interactivity as a form of artistic expression. Deadline registration for one or more modules till 08.11.: please via email to Tobias Kurpat [email protected]

Module I – The Academy as a Game World - Digital Archaeology with Polycam & Unity
November 10 – November 11/ 10am-4pm
Location: HGB Lichthof

Module II – From Zero to Game Scene – Introduction to Unity
November 13 – November 14/ 10am-4pm
Location: VR Lab 2.10 (previous 2.25)

Module III – Game Worlds as a Means of Expression – Worldbuilding for Artists
November 20 – November 21/ 10am-4pm
Location: VR Lab 2.10 (previous 2.25)

Module IV – How to Build: Exporting Executable ‘Final Products’ from Unity
January 21 – January 22/ 10am-4pm
Location: VR Lab 2.10 (previous 2.25) #unlearningdigitalities #hgbleipzig #costsofdisconnecting Graphics: Marie Walser Image: Tobias Kurpat