Kristoffer Ørum
Science fiction, set last week.
A PhD student. Human-AI Collaboration, Copenhagen University, until 2028.
Local. Copenhagen and Aarhus, mostly.
A programmer who picks the wrong algorithm on purpose.
Not research. The works were made first and explained afterwards.
Not local. Boston, Vancouver, Riga, Kraków, Oberhausen, San Francisco.
Children and young people modified everyday objects such as chairs, umbrellas, tools, or clothing into hybrid sculptural forms. Mundane Heroics, 2019
Monuments of a Fictional Past (Kraków Edition) is a speculative archive of ephemeral monuments that emerge, dissolve, and resurface across Kraków’s historical and imagined timelines. Monuments of a Fictional Past (Kraków Edition), 2025
Once generated, these daily phantom faces replaced Ørum’s personal avatar across his website, social networks and other platforms. Recognised Faces, 2014
The work documents their attempts to deconstruct a person into data: to apply a label, assign a tracking ID, map the body's motion onto a skeletal grid, and strip a voice down to plain text. Speaker 1, 2026
Frihed, Lighed og Hip-Hop used advanced imaging technology (artificial intelligence) to tell the story of a fictional relationship between the labour movement and hip-hop culture. Frihed, Lighed Og Hip-Hop, 2023
It is this everyday, digital infra-ordinary that Watershed makes tangible. Watershed, 2025
The Perfect Wave (2004) is a 3D animated video work by Anders Bojen & Kristoffer Ørum that takes as its subject the iconic and endlessly recurring image of a single wave. The Perfect Wave, 2004
Today, images are filtered, analysed, and manipulated by systems we rarely notice or understand. Watershed, 2025
The work forms part of De Tabte Runesten, a group exhibition returning nine lost cultural artefacts to Rundetaarn through the visions of contemporary artists. The Good, the Lost, and the Beautiful, 2025
By constructing new faces from parts of the most widely circulated images online, Recognised Faces created a snapshot of the constant data collection and algorithmic recognition happening daily on the internet. Recognised Faces, 2014
Visitors could connect their phones to new networks appearing in the gallery space and receive fragments of text and video. Invisible Objects, 2016
The work suggests that our understanding of phenomena like fire, water, and collective action is increasingly shaped by computational models and digital representations. Coffee Lake, 2019
The industrial spaces provided a striking backdrop for the reimagined objects and performances. Mundane Heroics, 2019
Biographical material such as family photographs from their suburban childhoods is merged into an endless series of alternative life stories. AutoBiography, 2011
The installation features ephemeral, non-heroic structures that encourage scrutiny of conventional heroic narratives. Monuments of A Fictitious Past, 2024
By framing the narrative as a myth, the artists connected the story of The Ballehage Woman to broader experiences of people excluded from society due to norms around appearance and behavior in Denmark. The Ballehage Woman, 2009
Ørum's contribution used algorithmic depth estimation to analyse one of the recovered photographs and generate a three-dimensional interpretation. Depth Estimation, 2019
The art world overflows with images of beautiful, smart, and confident artists. None of These Images Are of Me, 2025
I believe a stronger foundation for community lies in a shared recognition of vulnerability. None of These Images Are of Me, 2025
By engaging with the game, players experience how facts and assumed truths can be challenged, restructured and rearranged in playful and experimental ways. Disbelieving Gravity, 2013
The works form part of Ørum’s ongoing series Även staden drömmer om att vara en annan ("Even the city dreams of being another"), offering glimpses of civic and technological alternatives rooted in joy, memory, and shared invention. Even the City Dreams of Being Another, 2025
The work was structured as a natural history museum display. 3D-printed models represented crayfish body parts modified with technological elements. Signal_Crayfish, 2020
The exhibition was part of a series of events organised by Kunsthal for Maritim Æstetik, which also included publications, debates, food events, and bus tours. Djurs Øhav, 2020
The exhibition featured artists working in watercolor and gouache—a medium known for its fluidity and delicate textures—even when their usual practice includes sculptural, video, photographic, or installation-based work. Qua Aqua (Beetroot Texts), 2017
The installation combined the physical presence of the large-scale 3D-printed oyster sculpture with video content projecting the voices and experiences of future oyster-dwellers. Affluence without abundance, 2021
A third video, A Song for Ming, was a karaoke track by Kristoffer Ærørum with music and performance by Josefine Struckmann. Djurs Øhav, 2020
The work was presented at NLH Space in Copenhagen, which was run by The Organisation – Association for Artistic and Curatorial Platforms. Et Andet Rum 2, 2009
Each day, the system generated a new composite face from images found via Google’s lists of top search terms. Recognised Faces, 2014
The cardboard boxes were imprinted with logos of Tessellax, a fictitious medical company claiming to cure Involuntary Tessellation, a condition causing uncontrolled growth of square body parts. The Ballehage Woman, 2009
The work takes up how repeated exposure to images of buildings sinking into rubble with glass shards and dust spreading symmetrically creates expectations that the physical world behaves the same way. Melting State, 2020
The work contributed to ongoing conversations about how digital images and recognition technologies influence our perception of identity and political power. Putins Nose, 2018
Would You Like to Know More is an internet work in the Signal_Crayfish series, published online by Radar Contemporary. Would You Like to Know More, 2017
Brownfield Wonderland is a multi-platform art project at Spanien 19C in Aarhus, Denmark. Brownfield Wonderland, 2022
One was an animated video about life inside an oyster. Djurs Øhav, 2020
The starting point was the woodlouse as a kind of care worker. Leddyrsomsorg / Arthropod Care, 2026
Spray was the third part of a multi-year project that began with "Tank Hip-Hop" at Retro Avantgarde in Kongegaarder and continued with "Freedom, Equality, and Hip-Hop" at Sydhavn Station in November 2023. Mr. Spray, 2024
The project examined the invasive signal crayfish species, cataloguing its chemical communication abilities in comparison to human technologies like Wi-Fi. Signal_Crayfish, 2021
Documentation: - Liveart.dk project page - Nilas Dumstrei – Mundane Heroics - Liveart.dk overview - Kristoffer Ørum – Liveart.dk profile - ANTI Festival background - Facebook event archive - Video documentation on YouTube Mundane Heroics, 2019
It ran across two buildings in Ringsted: the artist-run Ringsted Galleriet on Bøllingsvej 15, and the blood-sampling department of Midt- og Vestsjællands Hospital on Bøllingsvej 30. Leddyrsomsorg / Arthropod Care, 2026
Across media, the fictional creatures were presented with a mixture of pop cultural humour and the kind of scientific authority familiar from public information campaigns. Mundane Monsters, 2023