An evening totally dedicated to the artists themselves. The 2006 Ars Electronica gala featuring the presentation of the Golden Nicas to the Prix Ars Electronica prizewinners is one of the Festival’s highlights. The evening’s program will feature the artistry of Emanuel Jauk (AT), Takashi Kawashima (JP) and others.

The 2006 CyberArts Exhibition at the O.K Center for Contemporary Art will showcase the prizewinning works in the Prix Ars Electronica’s Interactive Art category. Just like it says: all installations are interactive, so feel free—a hands-on encounter is the name of the game.

The concert featuring the prize winners in the Prix Ars Electronica’s Digital Musics category: l’île re-sonante by Eliane Radigue (FR), psychic stress soundtracks by Joe Colley (US) and Voodooluba by Niobe (Yvonne Cornelius, DE). Emanuel Jauk, winner of an Honorary Mention in the u19 – freestyle computing category, will perform his piece ac_form.

A big-screen showing of the prizewinning works in the 2006 Prix Ars Electronica’s Computer Animation / Visual Effects category.

The Nature series consists of a series of seven “motion paintings”, representing abstract forms evocative of those found in nature. Between three to six minutes in length, each motion painting is made up of several short sequences depicting intensely colored abstract shapes and patterns that constantly move, expand and evolve. Culling his metaphors from nature – trees, sky, grass, moon, fire, wind, rain, snow – John Maeda offers us a glimpse of digital space in the spirit of landscape painting.

Increasing complexity evokes a yearning on the part of many people for a simpler life, one that is more down-to-earth and rooted to one’s native soil. People long for simplicity in the traditional sense, and the opening event reflects this longing. Linz's industrial harbor and an old-fashioned paddle steamer form a mutually complementary, ready-made backdrop for the climax of the first day's activities and the big kick-off of the Festival week. Performances, interventions, music and visualizations ring in the Ars Electronica Festival.

Cell phones and the future of mobile telecommunications will be the talk of the town on and around Linz’s Main Square during the 2006 Ars Electronica Festival. How Nokia & Co. have altered our society’s communications structures will be illustrated by diverse projects in provocative and humorous fashion. From the portable telephone booth to the treasure hunt via cell phone—the entire Linz inner city will provide settings for interactive projects in public spaces. The less pleasant aspects of technology’s dominance of everyday life won’t get short shrift either.

Tangible, Audible, Playable, Wearable - Interface Culture Student Works at Ars Electronica 2006
curated by Christa Sommerer (AT) & Laurent Mignonneau (FR)

Music for a landscape—for the Danube and the riverside park adjacent to the Brucknerhaus—is the leitmotif of this year’s Klangpark. A high-performance loudspeaker system delivering superb sound reproduction will be set up to provide an optimal listening experience throughout the alfresco concert venue.
The piece selected for the 2006 Klangpark is Robert Ashley’s Music with Roots in the Aether, an exciting approach to staging a musical project and combining it with visual forms of expression.

Cyclists will convene on Linz’s Main Square where they’ll hook up their bikes to one of the many generators set up there waiting for them to provide the muscle power needed to charge a giant battery. Each revolution of every set of pedals moves the battery charge indicator a little closer to full. After sundown, the cyclists’ output will be switched directly to the
balloon; the harder they pedal, the brighter the artificial moon glows in the night sky. The humming of the muscle-powered generators will spread out a blanket of sound across the square. The battery that was charged up during the day discharges through the night and lets the moon gently set over Linz.

A commissioned work by Ars Electronica. Supported by the Arts Division of the Federal Chancellery, Austria. Special thanks to Donau Touristik Ges.m.b.H, E-Tech Linz, International Cycle Connection B.V. and Meinhart Kabel Gmbh. In collaboration with Ars Electronica Futurelab (Robert Abt und Stefan Mittelböck)

decker/reiter work on various soundscape ordering patterns behind turntables, computer and synthesizer. They’ll be followed by staalplaat and a live performance of a mono erosive surround-sound installation entitled Yokomono that was singled out for recognition with an Honorary Mention in the 2006 Prix Ars Electronica’s Digital Musics category. DJ ddkern’s extraordinary stylistic mix will conclude the evening with a bang.

At day’s end, there’s nothing like Quarter Nightline in the Stadtwerkstatt to wind things up on a high note.

Mediating between the realm of acoustic instruments and the domain of electronic and digital sounds is the prime mission of the long concert night that has become a fixed feature on Ars Electronica’s lineup. The great Bruckner Orchestra conducted by Dennis Russell Davies and featuring Maki Namekawa on piano will enable us to partake of extraordinary performances that span in virtuoso fashion the entire range bounded by these musical antipodes.

Moreover, the grand evening concert’s program represents not only an encounter of different musical worlds and generations; the music itself as a level of expression will also be provided with a visual augmentation. In conjunction with each of the works to be performed, a different artist has been invited to create a digital visualization that accompanies the composition, plumbs its depths, and even constitutes the artist’s own interpretation of the music.

Some Sounds and Some Fury is a further step in an ongoing collaboration between Brucknerhaus Linz
and Ars Electronica that attempts to create new experimental fusions between music and visual art.

Takashi’s Seasons is a sequential live shadow puppet / video performance in which various scenes interpreting the four seasons are performed by a modern Utsushi-e artist.


By shine:
Sa/Sat 2.9.     So/Sun 3.9.     Mo/Mon 4.9.
21:00 - 22:30   Hauptplatz

By rain:
So/Sun 3.9.     During the “Some Sounds and Some Fury” intermissions
Mo/Mon 4.9.    Following “Digital Musics in Concert”
21:00 - 22:30    Brucknerhaus

Grand Cafe zum Rothen Krebsen & the Institute for Expanded Art in cooperation with the Media Lab Helsinki
www.roterkrebs.net, simplecity@gmx.at

In conjunction with the 2006 Ars Electronica’s Campus exhibition, the “Grand Cafe zum Rothen Krebsen,” the Institute for Expanded Art’s event space, will provide an ideal setting for sound- and performance-based Concerts and installations. In addition to projects from Media Lab Helsinki, the Institute for Expanded Art will also showcase regional artists active at the interface of performance and music, as well as works that have emerged from the Arduino Project. Rounding things out will be an all-evening Finnish-Austrian DJ set, simulations of the northern lights, and live acts.

Cecily is the world’s first electric grandmother. At the Phoenix Theater, you can experience how a family’s life changes when their electric grandmother moves in!

A coproduction of Theater Phönix and Ars Electronica Futurelab. Virtual Scenography: Ars Electronica Futurelab / Christine Pilsl, Michael Lankes, Christopher Lindinger, Andreas Jalsovec, Stefan Schilcher. Actors: Randolf Destaller, Gabriele Deutsch, Thomas Pohl, Christian Scharrer, Waltraud Starck. Special thanks to Nana Susanne Thurner (u19 – freestyle computing).

Awards ceremony and presentation of the winning projects as well as the recipients of the Awards of Distinction and Honorary Mentions in the u19 - freestyle computing category. This year's Golden Nica prizewinners are between 13 and 15 years old, and thus the youngest winners in the history of u19. Out of 691 submissions in which a total of 1,230 young people were involved, the jury selected the following winners.

The situation of the world’s children is the theme of the 2006 Klangwolke (cloud of sound). Dutch songwriter and poet Herman van Veen will personally relate in word and song the story of Alfred Jodocus Kwak, a duck who’s involved as UNICEF’s ambassador for children’s rights. The 60th anniversary of the United Nations children’s aid organization also provides a fitting occasion for the Klangwolke to go into the living conditions of children around the world.

Presented by ORF Upper Austria and Brucknerhaus Linz. Supported by Telekom Austria and Generali Versicherung AG.

Following the successful virtual staging of Richard Wagner’s Das Rheingold (2004) and Gustav Mahler’s Symphony Nr. 2 in C Minor (2006), the series of projects is now carried on by a collaborative effort of Ars Electronica Futurelab and the Brucknerfest with a performance of Le Sacre du Printemps (“The Rite of Spring”).

The object of this game is to temporarily lay claim to a public space and impart a design to it in a very unconventional way. The players—all 100 – 200 of them—are issued little flags of different colors; they then form a square on a slope of Schlossberg, a hill overlooking Linz. Pedestrians on the nearby Nibelungen Bridge or in the Urfahr neighborhood are invited to call in requests for patterns they’d like to see on Schloßberg. The players on Schloßberg then jointly attempt to visually implement the requested image, choosing the appropriate colors and waving the corresponding flags.
To pre-register as a player: spiel@afo.at or 0664 / 954 96 57.
Afterwards, all players are invited to partake of a buffet!