Future Elevation
Ars Electronica Futurelab

'Pascal Maresch Pascal Maresch / 'Christopher Lindinger Christopher Lindinger

The Ars Electronica Futurelab is not an educational institution offering academic instruction or training per se. Nevertheless, the dissemination of knowledge is part of this facility’s inherent interest in confronting social and technological change in artistic and scientific forms. Thus, over the years, the Futurelab has been experimenting with a variety of different ways to carry out projects in cooperation with educational institutions and, in doing so, to have input into and to analyze the processes involved. The model underlying these collaborative efforts is based on the infrastructure installed, the specific approach developed, the research results obtained and the competence derived by the Ars Electronica Futurelab in pursuing its mission in this artistic and experimental context. The key aspect of these educational joint ventures is the effort to launch a self-sustaining project that is ready to go public at the Ars Electronica Festival or in the Ars Electronica Center. These programs demand a high degree of flexibility and organizational talent on the part of the students and institutions involved. This includes acquisition and dissemination of the knowledge and techniques—both theoretical and practical—that enable participants to successfully pursue a common objective.

Such joint efforts reflect processes currently at work in society that lead to overlapping among art, science and technology as well as among the ways of working and forms of training associated with them. Accordingly, part of the Futurelab’s intention is to lure students out of their majors, to give them an opportunity to discover new things and to then apply this knowledge and these new ideas in their specialty fields. Thus, what is proclaimed as well as practiced is the training of experts in the original sense of the word. If we consider the Latin root of “expert” (exportare: to carry forth), we see that experts differ from specialists to the extent that experts disseminate expertise to those in other fields in order to provide them with a fresh impetus that can be of use to them in their specialized field or which provides them with an aspect that expands their very definition of their discipline.

This approach goes hand in hand with renouncement of the seemingly long-since-obsolete image of the classic artist. The complexity and multi-layered nature of the tasks involved— especially in the area of media or systemic art—call for an array of “experts” who work jointly on a project, whereby the focus is on the process itself and less on individual ideas or those who come up with them.

In accordance with these ideas, an experiment is launched by a team taking leave of specialization and focusing on the process itself. And this also brings about a change in the participants’ conception of self. They cease defining their task within the framework of a prescribed area of responsibility and discrete artistic, scientific and technical disciplines, and instead proceed on the basis of substantive objectives in order to apply their individual means and capabilities to the successful completion of the respective project. Here, we have come full circle and arrive back at the previously mentioned “inherent interest” and mission of the Ars Electronica Futurelab. After all, this very process describes the Futurelab’s approach. Thus, the Futurelab not only brings technical and theoretical know-how to the table; it also seeks to establish a way of working that serves as a prototype for all this institution does. The following articles have been submitted by universities and specialized colleges that in recent years have integrated work with the Ars Electronica Futurelab into their course offerings. The result has been a series of cooperative projects. The students worked with existing infrastructure at the Ars Electronica Center and came up with solutions for the presentation of installations—some interactive—on these elements of the building.

Text: Pascal Maresch / Christopher Lindinger

time.space.media
Fachhochschule / University of Applied Sciences – Düsseldorf, Germany
Project Supervisor: Tanja Kullack

The understanding of time and space (and their reciprocal dependency) as central elements of physics, philosophy, psychology and sociology also, of necessity, “informs” the work of architects whose job is to construct spaces.

In an Information Society in which data moving at the speed of light compress space (over time), the concept of space/time is permanently called into question, and in a subjectively more serious way than was once the case with Einstein’s only conditionally accessible Theory of Relativity. Abstract space/time models from various disciplines of the arts and sciences mutually condition and influence each other—for instance, models from physics have continually contributed to a scientific understanding of how thought, feeling and perception function, and vice versa. “Own time” refers not only to (physical) time’s dependence upon an individual’s position in space and speed; it also describes the phenomenon of individualized perception of time being dependent upon an individual’s personal emotional and mental constitution and cultural circumstances. Architects are especially interested in psychological aspects of the perception of space and time. One of the sensible and promising premises (of this seminar) was thus, first and foremost, to utilize (emotional) experience to a greater extent than (intellectual) understanding as the relevant vehicle in the perception of space and, via emotionalization, to engender sustainability (and insight).

From inception on, the project’s content was supervised by the Futurelab. Thanks to a shared conviction that the seminar ought to be process-oriented, the ongoing dialog was carried on in a very productive and stimulating way. Joint workshops have led to interdisciplinary encounters, whereby the synergistic experiences that have emerged encompassing insights from the realm in which spatial constructions (architecture), technology / informatics and art overlap—have feedback effects upon (inform) these disciplines.

A condition of the project was the indispensable joint creation of a theoretical basis that, as a shared point of departure, is precisely what makes it possible to competently approach concrete issues (space-time / theory of relativity; space-time / philosophy of art, age / the passage of time; cultures of time; computer space / cyberspace; the perception of space). The central questions raised by the individual projects were bundled together and a functional system was developed from its complex fundamental theme of “compression,” one that was based on a methodological–mathematical approach.

GENERATIVE PARTICLE CONTINUUM
Ina-Maria Kapitola, Marion Woerle, Christian Glauert

Continuum [Generative Grammar [< grammar whose rules are so clearly fixed according to a mathematical model that complicated forms can be produced out of simple ones] Space and time as well as the relationship of space-time to available information have undergone change over the years. Pre-industrial societies assigned actions and occurrences to a linear course of events. Since the Industrial Revolution, however, temporal and spatial linkages have become closer and denser. Today, in the age of multimedia, worldwide network linkages have proceeded to such an extent and the routes (of information) have become so short that time could be represented more realistically as flat. Information Society makes possible the simultaneity of local and global action, being here and there at the same time. Space and time have been intensively condensed.

Networking of Information – Condensation of Information – Condensation of the Feeling of Space – Condensation of Time – Ars Electronica Center Elevator Project

Number of particles - Number of sounds
Cell division - Partial tones
Impact speed - Impact dynamics
Contact among particles - Overtone buzz
Three-dimensional movement – Quadrophonia