Ars Foyer Program

Open Stage

OF LAB

09.09. | 14:00 - 16:00

Brucknerhaus

Mehmet Akten, Lia, Chris Sugrue, Golan Levin, Arturo Castro, Kyle McDonald, Dan Paluska, Damian Stewart, Todd Vanderlin, Taeyoon Choi, Tine Papendick, Travis Kirton/Ars Electronica Futurelab, Carl-Johan Rosen/Ars Electronica Futurelab, Zachery Lieberman, Theo Watson, Pierre Emile Proske/Ars Electronica Futurelab, Carles Gutiérrez Vallés/Ars Electronica Futurelab

Zachary Lieberman and Theo Watson, originators of openFrameworks, an open source, C++ toolkit for artists and creative technologists, are transforming the 1st floor of the Brucknerhaus into an experimental laboratory: OF Lab. The idea is to build a space where a dozen or so hackers, tinkerers and researchers will hang out and experiment, make art, create guerrilla exhibitions around the festival and document their progress and discoveries. The OF Lab will focus on creating new works that come directly out of suggestions from the festival audience members, and over the course of the event, create a feedback loop between suggestions, experimentation, making projects, exhibiting the results and most importantly, exposing the process.
Structurally, the OF Lab will be constructed out of scaffolding, and contain three distinct floors. Aesthetically, it will be something between a pirate ship and a media lab. The first floor will contain documentation of the lab's progress, an area for audience members to suggest what they would like to see in a new work, and also, through a surveillance system, provide an eavesdrop into the inner workings of the lab. The second floor will be a workspace where the OF Lab team will code, hack, and collaborate to answer the audience's requests.
The third floor, essentially a public lounge, will provide a meditative meeting ground where lab participants and audience members can converse, and will host informal presentations about the inner workings and findings of the lab.