Every year, Linz’s University of Art hosts an exhibition by artists associated with an international institution of higher learning whose curriculum takes an innovative approach to teaching media art and media culture. The 2006 guest is the University of Art & Design in Helsinki, Finland and its Media Lab. Beta Lounge presents works by students and output from the Media Lab’s four research groups. The projects on display deal with such diverse topics as digital cultural heritage, e-learning, advanced interactive audiovisual narrative systems as well as the process of empowering human beings to enable them to profit from the development of digital technology and to upgrade their lifestyles through the use of digital tools.

The theme of this year’s exhibition of works by students in the Linz University of Art’s Interface Culture masters program is how interactive technologies are also making a growing impact on creative applications and hybrid art projects, and, through novel, inspired amalgamations of technology and art, are yielding interesting prototypes at the nexus of media art, design research and application.