A new type of glass surface that functions as an acoustic membrane will be mounted on the foyer columns. Each visitor holding his or her ear to this glass surface will hear text excerpts from 20^th century authors who have dealt with the change of the idea of the subject in the postindustrial age. When relativizing the autarchy of the subject, science fiction literature has developed the concept of the terminal subject that has been colonized by machines.

"The entire planet is being developed into terminal identity and complete surrender," wrote William S. Burroughs in Nova Express in 1964. Science fiction literature has coined the term "terminal identity" for this postmodern subject that has not a fixed, but rather a variable and contingent body. The multiply split subject possesses a changeable identity that can traverse various stations in the course of its life.
Thomas Pynchon, William S. Burroughs, Raymond Federman, the OuLiPo group in France (Raymond Queneau, George Perec), John Hawkes, William Glass, Kathy Acker, J. G. Ballard, Robert Sheckley, Philip K. Dick, William Gibson, and Bruce Sterling, among others, have dealt with these topics in their work.

The Austrian novelist Robert Musil also analyzed the insecurity of the postindustrial individual with regard to historical designs of identity in his novel with the indicative title <i<The Man Without Qualities: "He suspects: this order is not as stable as it would appear to be; no thing, no I, no form, no principle is secure …" (R. Musil).

Jeffrey Shaw
born in 1944 in Melbourne, Australia. Lives and works in Karlsruhe. Since the late 60s, Jeffrey Shaw has pioneered the use of interactivity and virtuality in his many art installations. His works have been exhibited worldwide at major museums and festivals. For many years he was living in Amsterdam where he co-founded the Evenstructure Research Group (1969–1980). Since 1991 Shaw has been director of the Institute for Visual Media at the ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Germany. He leads a unique research and production facility where artists and scientists are working together and developing profound artistic applications of the new media technologies

Peter Weibel
born in 1944 in Odessa. Since 1976, Weibel has been teaching at many universities and academies in Europe and in the US. From 1984 to 1989, he was Director of the Media Department of New York University, Buffalo. In 1989, he founded the Institut für neue Medien at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main. From 1986 to 1995, he was Artistic Director of the Ars Electronica Linz; from 1993 to 1998, he was Artistic Director of the Neue Galerie am Landesmuseum Joanneum in Graz; from 1993 to 1999, he was Austrian Commissioner at the Biennale in Venice. Since 1999, Weibel has been the Chairman of the ZKM in Karlsruhe