In the artist's words:

Michael Haller, born in 1945, studied philosophy, political and social sciences at the Universities of Freiburg i.Br. and Basel. He wrote his doctoral thesis on Hegel's political philosophy and researched the role of the media in Western democracies. Before his appointment to the University of Leipzig in 1993, Haller worked for 25 years as a reporter and senior editor in various press media in the German-speaking world. Until his retirement in the fall of 2010, he held the Chair of General and Special Journalism Studies. Today he is scientific director of the non-profit European Institute for Journalism and Communication Research (EIJK) in Leipzig. Research areas: Deliberative theories of public communication in democracies; identification and communication of information and media literacy for the mediatized lifeworld, problems of media and communication ethics.