The name //////////fur//// covers two media artists and art critics, gadget artists and game designers, Volker Morawe and Tilmann Reiff.
They are perceived by some as artistic sadists, other consider them – by reason of their boldly fresh and unconventional approach – the Dadaists of their genre. Their works polarize, provoke and enthrall, and have won prestigious international awards, including the Japan Media Arts Award (2003), an Ars Electronica honorable mention (2002) and the International Media Art Award of the ZKM Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe (2003). Numbering among their international exhibition venues are the MOCA in Shanghai, the Art Fair in Cologne, the Yerba Center for the Arts in San Francisco, MoMA in New York and many other.
Volker Morawe worked previously as a space electronics specialist and producer of musical hits. Tilman Reiff is an IT specialist focusing on interface design. The two met at the Kunsthochschule für Medien in Cologne, became housemates and thereby laid the foundation for many extraordinary installations that not only invite the viewers to play, but, above all, investigate the mechanism of medial interaction.
The exhibition no pain no game was commissioned from //////////fur//// by the Goethe Institute and, as part of the PLAY INSTINCT! project, will be on view in many European cities until 2016.