Artistic creativity went into the Spitz Hotel’s recent makeover. You can admire the design work of Ars Electronica Futurelab staffers in the hotel’s Lobby and on the 1st Upper Level.

Four project elements bear the Ars Electronica Center’s imprint. An installation in the Lobby—in a setup that appears to be a distant cousin of a bookcase—provides the Spitz Hotel’s guests with an overview of Linz’s cultural institutions, events and activities: from Linz09–European Capital of Culture to the Museum of the Future.

Another Lobby highlight is the reactive wall that translates movements by people and objects into computer visualizations. Guests’ motions influence the visuals in real time.
Refraction of the light of a computer-generated projection on a semi-transparent surface displays the current time. Depending on the side from which the observer views the binary chronograph, the virtual objects in individual read-out fields show the time of day from left to right or from right to left—the hours in a 1-to-12 format and the minutes in a tens field and a ones field.
It works like this: the virtual Zeitwesen react to movements in their immediate surroundings, whereby the position of the observer influences both the objective as well as the subjective flow of time. This is reflected by disturbances in the display.


Additionally a dedicated video channel is the viewer’s Ars Electronica Festival gateway. After previewing some of Ars’ greatest hits, aficionados of the leading edge just might want to stop by and check out what’s happening right now!

On the 1st Upper Level, individual rooms feature prints detailing Ars Electronica projects.