Francis Hunger (b. 1976, Dessau) is a media artist, researcher, and writer based in Leipzig whose work investigates the cultural, political, and social dimensions of database technology and artificial intelligence. He holds a diploma in Media Art and a Meisterschüler degree from the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst (HGB) Leipzig, and a PhD (summa cum laude) from the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, where his media-archaeological dissertation examined the genealogy of database technology and practices. He is Researcher and University Teacher for Emergent Digital Media at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste München, teaching in the class of Prof. Hito Steyerl on machine learning, databases, and data-driven technologies, and a postdoctoral researcher on the DATAUNION ERC project at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. He is co-editor of carrier-bag.net. His artistic research project The Setun Conspiracy (2005) investigated the Soviet ternary computer through installation, radio play, and publication. From 2020 to 2023 he was a researcher on the project “Training the Archive” at HMKV Dortmund and Ludwig Forum Aachen, critically examining AI, statistics, and pattern recognition for art and curating. He co-curated House of Mirrors: Artificial Intelligence as Phantasm (HMKV Dortmund, 2022, with Inke Arns and Marie Lechner), featuring 24 international artists. He was previously Junior Curator at HMKV (2005–08). Homepage: irmielin.org

Selected Bibliography
Hunger, Francis, Inke Arns, and Marie Lechner, eds. House of Mirrors: Artificial Intelligence as Phantasm. Dortmund: Kettler / HMKV, 2022.
Hunger, Francis, Inke Arns, Eva Birkenstock, and Dominik Bönisch, eds. Training the Archive. Cologne: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König / Ludwig Forum Aachen, 2024.
Hunger, Francis. Setun: An Inquiry into the Soviet Ternary Computer. Leipzig: Institut für Buchkunst, 2008.