What’s the Difference Between a Conceptual Hack and Rage Bait? What’s the Difference Between a Conceptual Hack and Rage Bait? | #hacking | #cybersecurity | #infosec | #comptia | #pentest | #hacker

UBERMORGEN has spent more than three decades probing the infrastructures that organize contemporary life. Founded in 1995 by Liz Haas (lizvlx) and Luzius Bernhard, the Swiss-Austrian collective emerged from the early internet at a moment when digital networks were still largely understood as spaces of freedom, experimentation, and possibility. Rather than treating technology as a neutral tool, UBERMORGEN approached it as a social, economic, and political system. Projects such as Vote-Auction, Google Will Eat Itself, The Sound of eBay, and Amazon Noir transformed elections, search engines, online marketplaces, and intellectual property regimes into artistic material, exposing the often invisible structures that shape contemporary society.

Long before concepts such as platform capitalism, algorithmic governance, or the attention economy entered mainstream discourse, UBERMORGEN was already investigating how power circulates through digital systems. The group has frequently described its projects as “conceptual hacks,” a term that captures both their artistic methodology and their refusal to remain within the confines of the art world. Rather than producing representations of systems, they enter them, test their limits, and observe what happens. In an era increasingly defined by engagement bait, outrage cycles, and algorithmically optimized visibility, that approach raises a timely question: what distinguishes a conceptual hack from today’s rage-bait economy? Is provocation still capable of revealing something about the world, or has it become just another growth strategy?

In conversation with Anika Meier for SLEEK, Liz Haas, Luzius Bernhard, and Billie Bernhard speak about the evolution of UBERMORGEN from a digital art duo into an intergenerational family project, the legacy of works such as Vote-Auction and Google Will Eat Itself, their long-standing fascination with markets and systems, and the changing relationship between art, attention, and uncertainty. Moving from net art and NFTs to TikTok comments, social media radicalization, and Art Basel, the discussion explores what it means to make experimental art in a culture increasingly organized around visibility, engagement, and prediction.

Anika Meier For more than two decades, UBERMORGEN has been known as a Swiss-Austrian digital art duo founded in 1995 by Liz Haas (lizvlx) and Luzius Bernhard, who was credited in earlier works as Hans Bernhard. Now there are three of you. How did that transition happen?

lizvlx I once saw an interview in which someone asked an elderly Hollywood actor, “How did it happen that you had children?” And he replied, “You know, sex.” We had children, and eventually they became part of UBERMORGEN.

Looking at it from another angle, I’ve always been a fan of what we call a Gasthaus in Austria—a family-run restaurant or pub where everyone is involved in keeping the place going. At some point, we realized that this was also how we wanted to run our artistic enterprise: as a family project. The kids were involved from a very early stage, and over time their role grew naturally. Now they are officially part of it.

Billie Bernhard It was a natural progression. One of the key methodologies has always been throwing ideas around, talking nonsense, and seeing what sticks, following connections, and discovering patterns as they emerge.

There’s also a generational dimension to it. We grew up in digital environments that simply didn’t exist for our parents in the same way, so we bring different references and experiences to the work. That creates an interesting exchange. Becoming involved never felt like a conscious decision or a major transition. It’s probably the thing I know how to do best.

Luzius Bernhard It has often been suggested that UBERMORGEN is a constructed family project. I’ve always oscillated between agreeing and disagreeing with that idea.

On the one hand, Billie and Lola were involved from the very beginning, literally from birth. Even in the early years, it wasn’t a passive role. The kids were always involved in an active way, so that element of a family construct was there from the start. On the other hand, it’s really what Billie described: the team became the family, and the family became the team across different generations.

In the contemporary art world, I don’t know of any comparable family enterprises. Art history is full of workshops and studios that were passed from father to son and then on to the next generation. For a brand like UBERMORGEN to continue to exist and reach audiences that don’t necessarily grow up with you, without compromising how you work, what you do, or who you work with, you need to work intergenerationally or transgenerationally. Otherwise, you either lose entire generations or adapt in ways that I wouldn’t like. It becomes superficial. You’re looking for the lowest common denominator, and we don’t want that.

AM There has been a lot of discussion recently about rage bait, hacks, and provocation in relation to Florentina Holzinger in Venice, SHL0Ms on the internet, and Beeple at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin. Since the mid-1990s, you have described your work as conceptual hacks. Would you use the term “rage bait” for those projects today, or does it refer to something fundamentally different?

lizvlx It depends on the aquarium. Where are the fish swimming? How big is the pond? What kinds of fish are in it? Who are the predators? The bait aspect is definitely relevant. We used to say that we’re not fishing with a single rod. We prefer to cast several lines into the water and see where the audience bites.

Our idea has never been to produce something so rage-baity that people feel compelled to react to it. Rather, we create different points of entry and see where interest emerges. And that interest doesn’t have to be driven by rage or negative emotions. Of course, today that has become a much more important factor. Back then, the reaction didn’t have to be negative. It could be based on any number of things. For us, it has more to do with attention and curiosity than with provocation for its own sake.

We don’t see ourselves as missionaries or as artists with a singular vision that needs to be imposed on the world. That’s closer to what rage bait means to me. We’re more interested in identifying topics that resonate with a general or specific audience. Once people have sunk their teeth into something, that’s where the play begins.

No hate on rage bait. Personally, within the family biotope, I’m considered the online rage baiter in the comments section.

BB Oh my God, she is. We’ll be sitting at the family dinner table discussing comments we’ve all seen under various TikToks. I’ve had at least eight friends tell me the same thing: “Every time I see a TikTok that makes me feel something, I go to the comments, and your mother is already there. She’s the first comment, she has 800 likes, and everyone is interacting with her.” It’s working. People seem to love it.

lizvlx I cracked 1,000 followers on TikTok yesterday. It’s entirely based on comments, not on making videos.

LB Why aren’t you promoting UBERMORGEN with your rage-baiting madness?

lizvlx Because I thought I had to wait until I reached 1,000 followers.

LB It was never about rage bait, because the motivation was different. That’s still true today. That’s also why Liz isn’t applying these tactics directly to our projects. We work experimentally. I’ve probably repeated that 10,000 times over the course of our career because it’s important. Ours is an experimental methodology.

We’re just trying shit out. Usually, when you try shit out, you’re motivated by interest and curiosity. You start experimenting, and sooner or later it becomes uncomfortable, both for you and for others. Then we publish the results and, as Liz said, develop things further from there.

Rage bait operates differently. It’s more like using a trawler net because you already know it’s going to work. It’s targeted. It’s built around a synergy with algorithms. They train you, you train them, and together you optimize each other through these micro-fascist techniques.

AM One of your early conceptual hacks, Vote-Auction, will be on view at Zero 10 as part of the Digital Masterpieces booth, curated by Georg Bak for ArtMeta, at Art Basel. Do you also consider it a provocation?

lizvlx Vote-Auction was never a provocation. It was about making visible something that already existed at the time and, in fact, exists to an even greater extent today.

Vote-Auction was a website that offered a platform for buying and selling votes in a U.S. presidential election. It wasn’t presented as an artwork. It was presented as an enterprise, as a money-making business. That’s why the media talked about the “maverick Austrian businessman.”

And that’s an important point. A lot of net art, and especially media hacking, only works if you don’t announce it as art. You can’t come along and say, “Look, this action is art.” You actually have to do it. You can’t place it within the framework of art from the outset. It has to exist in the world on its own terms.

It makes perfect sense to show the work today because few things are as contested as election markets. Back then, Vote-Auction gave us a way to talk about the election business, the election industry, and the systems surrounding it. We did an extraordinary number of media appearances. I’m not exaggerating when I say we were doing ten interviews a day. That went on for three or four months. It was a complete media frenzy. Every interview became an opportunity to discuss the broader mechanics of elections.

This was in 2000. We know what has happened in the twenty-six years since. Election markets have become a significant area of financial speculation and investment. Vote-Auction remains a very effective way of making art in that context.

LB The CIA, the FBI, the NSA, the Austrian and German intelligence services, The Washington Post—everybody seemed to be involved. It felt as if the whole world had become part of the story because the case was so exemplary. We reached approximately 500 million people.

For years, we couldn’t travel to the United States because we were on various watchlists, including no-fly and no-entry lists. It took about a decade before that situation finally dissolved and we were able to return.

AM One interesting aspect of UBERMORGEN projects such as Google Will Eat Itself, The Sound of eBay, and Amazon Noir is that they suggest a long-standing interest in markets. You’ve been thinking about how markets function, how systems work, and how power structures, monopolies, and the attention economy operate.

Where did that interest come from?

lizvlx When we started working on what became the EKMRZ (e-commerce) trilogy, namely Google Will Eat Itself (GWEI), The Sound of eBay, and Amazon Noir, it began with Google. At the time, everyone was making Google projects, and they were all very nice. We decided not to be so nice. With eBay, however, we came to a different conclusion. eBay was one of the giants then, and it still is, but it isn’t inherently mean. It’s a second-hand marketplace. That’s why we made The Sound of eBay. You don’t always have to diss everything.

In a way, that relates to something we’re working on now, which we call Happy Dystopia. eBay is a happy dystopia. It’s evil, but what happens on the platform isn’t necessarily evil. The same could be said about music. The music industry may be problematic, but music itself isn’t.

As for why we were so interested in markets, I can only answer that for myself. I became interested in markets very early on because I studied economics. Understanding markets was part of my education. I’ve always felt that markets are a kind of software the planet runs on. Not the entire planet, obviously. Birds and trees would disagree, and rightfully so. But a lot of human society runs on that software. It might even be firmware.

Our real interest has always been systems, authority, power, and pseudo-power. In that context, it made sense to engage with companies like Google, which were becoming enormous through what we called “pixel money.” It’s money that isn’t tied to value in any tangible sense. It’s airy. Pixel-like.

And, as Luzius said, these projects were experimental setups. It wasn’t about saying, “I need to make this point.” The question was: How do you make a portrait of eBay? How do you make a portrait of Google? How do you make a portrait of Amazon? That’s what those three projects are. They’re portraits.

LB The experimental systems approach has always been our primary interest. With projects like Google Will Eat Itself, the conceptual artwork and its execution are inseparable. The conceptualization comes first, but then you have to execute it. And that’s an important lesson, especially for young artists and students. Certain ideas only become meaningful once you test them in reality. You couldn’t have arrived at those insights through conceptualization alone. Too many things were happening. The systems were too complex. There were too many variables to simulate in your head. You have to experience them.

With Google Will Eat Itself, for example, there was a moment when I realized that Google’s market valuation had surpassed that of all Swiss banks combined. The information was publicly available, but realizing it from within the project was something else entirely. It was a key moment in understanding a broader paradigm shift. For generations, Swiss banks had been the keepers of secrets. They were the gatekeepers of information, money, and secrecy itself. Suddenly, that role had shifted to digital corporations like Google. That was mind-blowing. What the fuck are we actually watching here?

And this connects back to what Liz said about taking a relatively naive approach. This is also where I become critical of some of my fellow artists. Just look at the NFT boom. Ninety-five percent of it was superficial aesthetics and people playing with mathematics and similar ideas. That’s fine. It’s just not what moves the world. What interests me are the structures that actually shape the world in substantial and systematic ways. That’s what I want to understand. I don’t want to diss anyone. Well, I’m perfectly fine with the diss.

Billie, what is your take on this kind of market question? You have another perspective on the world.

BB When I look at systems, including markets, I’m trying to find nodes that weren’t visible before. The moment you find them, you’re already testing something. Betting markets and similar systems are interesting, but they also feel somewhat resolved. You can observe them and understand their basic logic. There are always surprises, but the underlying structure is relatively predictable. What interests me more is the layer beneath the surface that connects different markets, whether that’s money, ideology, or something else. That’s where the interesting questions are and where I think the future lies.

AM Speaking of contemporary markets and NFTs, during the NFT boom, you created a series of handmade D1cks minted on the Tezos blockchain in response to the 10,000-piece CryptoPunks collection minted on Ethereum.

lizvlx There are a lot of jokes you can make with The D1cks. The obvious thing would have been to automate the process and generate 10,000 variations, just like the NFT collections they were responding to. But I was interested in making them by hand and making each one unique. It’s remarkable how much character you can create with so few pixels.

These days, I mostly make a D1ck when I feel it’s necessary or when someone asks for one. I’ve often said: “Send me a dick pic, and I’ll make you a portrait.” I won’t make a portrait of your face if you’re a man, but I’ll make a portrait of your dick. The nice thing is that, while sending dick pics has become increasingly problematic, once it’s transformed into an UBERMORGEN D1ck, it becomes art. And art protects.

I also make D1cks based on people who are, in my opinion, dicks. That’s where the market aspect becomes interesting. The works follow a conceptual pricing model. If I make a D1ck of someone I don’t like, it will be cheap. If I make one for someone I admire, it will be expensive. So the price becomes a measure of your worth. That’s an important approach to men in general. They always want to know what’s going on. They want everything spelled out. Well, there it is. There’s your D1ck, and there’s your price. That’s the service. And that’s not rage bait. That’s just pragmatic art.

LB What’s interesting is that nobody was offended by the D1cks. Something changed about ten years ago. Not necessarily the rage-bait aspect, but the way these things functioned. We would put something out and think, “Jesus Christ, this is going to be a disaster. This is going to blow up. We’re going to get into trouble again, deal with lawyers, all that stuff.”

And then nothing happened. The work was just absorbed. It disappeared into a vacuum. It was amazing. Since then, that mechanism doesn’t seem to work in quite the same way anymore. That’s also why Billie has become such an important force within UBERMORGEN.

lizvlx I disagree. I think it was actually the opposite. There were definitely moments when we thought, “Please, not again.” We’d had so many projects that attracted enormous public attention and so much negativity. That’s a lot to deal with, and you’re not always in the mood for it. Sometimes the question was: Do we really want attention for this project? Artistically, the answer was often yes. Personally, the answer was often no.

But take the PMC Wagner Arts project we did in 2023. We genuinely didn’t expect anyone to be upset about it. And, funnily enough, that’s exactly how outrage works. In Switzerland, everyone was completely fine with it. In Berlin, it caused huge drama. Instagram and Berlin were basically saying, “This is horrible. These people should be lynched immediately and sent to Mars, never to return.”

AM What is PMC Wagner Arts about?

lizvlx PMC Wagner Arts is a project about two uses of art: art as a tool for whitewashing and art as a form of warfare, or propaganda-plus. What was interesting is that some people, especially on Instagram, perceived our project as being too real. That’s something we’ve encountered before. As I said in relation to Vote-Auction, we’re not willing to provide a comforting frame around the work. If you need additional context in order to feel safe, that’s something you have to provide for yourself. We’re not interested in doing that.

Learning to live with uncertainty is important. The work isn’t there to provide certainty. It exists within uncertainty. That has always been an issue for UBERMORGEN in the marketplace. A lot of our work produces uncertainty and insecurity. You don’t know whether you’re doing the right thing. You don’t know whether something is safe, good, or even appropriate. Markets generally don’t absorb that very well. But we’re willing to accept that trade-off because we believe that, in the long run, people can learn to feel comfortable with the uncertainty our work generates. Then again, maybe not. We’ve been doing this for twenty-five or thirty years, and it still makes people uncomfortable.

LB It’s like Actionism. Those works were made in the 1960s and 1970s, and they still retain their power. The same is true of many UBERMORGEN works from the 2000s. They remain potent because they continue to produce that feeling of insecurity. They stay virulent. In the end, I think the market wants dead art. It has to be dead. It has to stop moving. Only then does it become safe: as an aesthetic choice, as an investment, and as a form of peer-group validation.

AM Has social media democratized provocation, or has it commodified it? You said earlier that Billie has become an important force within UBERMORGEN, helping to ensure that the project continues to function online.

In the past, traditional media played a crucial role in the circulation of your work. Liz, you mentioned doing countless radio interviews around Vote-Auction. Today, the internet has become the primary distribution channel, and provocation, or even hacking, often functions as a growth strategy. You also mentioned building a TikTok following largely through comments.

So how do you still cut through the noise? If provocation has become a growth strategy, what possibilities remain for artists working with conceptual hacks and provocation today?

BB That’s the problem we’re dealing with right now. We have a meeting about it almost every week. There’s a certain flatness to social media, and we still haven’t found a way to translate the UBERMORGEN approach into that environment. What succeeds there tends to be either completely misunderstood, vaguely Dadaist brain-rot content or highly polished influencer-style material. I’m interested in moving beyond the art-world niche and reaching a broader audience.

We keep going back and forth on engagement bait. At one point we say, “Fine, let’s just do it.” Then we start having a conceptual discussion about it, the conversation becomes genuinely interesting, and suddenly it stops working.

It’s similar to what Mom was saying about PMC Wagner Arts. The things that go viral are never predictable because it’s impossible to know what people will find offensive and what they won’t. It often feels completely random. What interests me more is the opposite direction: a form of radical personalization in which everyone is essentially making art for themselves. Your Instagram feed becomes both the artwork and the audience. You consume and produce it at the same time because it gives you exactly what you want.

LB We never really participated in social media as a professional marketing tool. What Billie is describing points to something else: social media has become parasocial media. We’re no longer primarily consuming our friends. Maybe through Stories, occasionally. Mostly, we’re consuming influencers. It’s television in a different form.

What’s interesting about Billie’s idea is that it takes that logic one step further. Instead of watching your friends, you’re watching yourself. You’re performing for yourself and consuming your own performance. That’s a fascinating form of radicalization.

AM Speaking of change, this brings me to my final question. Art Basel is, in many ways, the ultimate art-market event. Yet your work was never really about producing objects for the market. How do you feel about being part of that context today?

LB It’s not that net artists suddenly started chasing the market. The work already existed. Then people started approaching us and asking, “Do you want to show the old etoy material? Do you want to show the early UBERMORGEN works?” And the answer is: fuck yeah.

I grew up in Basel. I remember Art Basel when it was simply Art Basel in Basel. Now it’s a global franchise. It’s a blue-chip corporation. It’s probably the largest distributed art marketplace on the planet. And I like it. I genuinely like the fair. I like the atmosphere. I like being represented there. Not because of selling, but because of being there.