about

peter michael witt (* 1957 in heidenheim/brenz) is a conceptual artist, musician and founder of the festival < die digitale dusseldorf >. he lives and works in düsseldorf. 
the first foundations for his artistic work were laid in art lessons at school with the artist roland wesner. while studying german literature, computational linguistics, modern history and political science at the eberhard karl university in tübingen, he became interested in gestural painting and studied for two years with the artist lothar schall. after graduating as magister artium, he went to düsseldorf, where he applied to the art academy, was not accepted („you’re already too far along, you won’t let anyone teach you anything“), worked for many years as an advertising copywriter, winning numerous awards in creative competitions. alongside this work, he turned to making music and founded the post-punk band „soilent green“ together with horst halfmann („bo & the headhunters“) and werner heidenreich („beatrevolver“) in the early 90s. he began to deal with experimental electronic music in the mid-90s with his project „krautelectronics“, which explored various sub-genres of the non-genre left field by means of home recording for the following 10 years. from 2006 onwards, he turned increasingly to the visual arts again and critically examined phenomena of the current art scene and subcultural positions with the exhibitions he curated at the kulturverein damenundherren, which he directed for 6 years. in 2009, together with jürgen krause and johannes rix (both „volksgarten“ and „fern“), he founded the band „rhein“, which released several albums on the hauch records label (2018 „takes“, 2020 „spiel“ and „300_1“). he has designed three music videos for the band so far. he presented larger conceptual art works for the first time with his own exhibitions (2010 „orgon akkumulator“, 2011 „damien hirst works“ and 2012 „künstlerkirmes“) as contributions to the annual düsseldorf nights of the museums. the „digitalis“ exhibition series he curated from 2012 to 2013 at the kulturverein damenundherren was one of the first presentations of digital art in düsseldorf. in 2016, he founded the festival for digital art, music and contemporary criticism < die digitale dusseldorf > together with nam june paik student and event manager werner pillig, curated several exhibitions as part of the festival (2016 „splitter & amalgam“, 2020 „digital secrets“, 2021 „digital jokes“, 2022 „ins nirgendwie – digitale utopien“) and developed his own digital artworks together with computer scientist and mathematician frank spiess in 2017 and 2018. he released his first solo album with experimental music „schlauch“ under the pseudonym „onroda“ in 2021.