Ars Electronica Futurelab in Steyr’s World of Work Museum
The Linz media art lab developed a wide array of interactive installations for a trend-setting exhibition entitled “working_world.net.”
Linz/Steyr, June 6, 2006 (Ars Electronica). The new exhibit at the World of Work (Arbeitswelt) Museum in Steyr is one of a kind in Europe. It presents a comprehensive overview of the massive changes that have revolutionized work over the last 20 years, and also features a survey of current developments and future challenges.
The exhibition’s curators wanted to take advantage of the full spectrum of modern approaches to getting across content in a museum setting. To bring this concept to fruition, they found the ideal partner in the Ars Electronica Futurelab. The Linz media art laboratory designed and implemented a wide-ranging concept for visitor interaction with the museum’s extensive exhibits. The thematic focal point: interrelationships among work, technology and everyday life in the future.
Several installations offer visitors the opportunity to actively encounter the material on display and to experience it with all the senses. A labor situation fosters an independent approach, and interactive installations encourage visitors to deal with the exhibition’s theme on their own terms. Input terminals enable visitors to voice their own personal impressions, worries, thoughts and hopes on the subject of work and the future in the form of “digital Post-its.” To supplement these features, Ars Electronica Futurelab staffers developed several installations that provide access to further information in the form of images, videos, texts and audio material. The accent is on user-friendliness: simple, convenient and intuitively understandable operation. Thus, the philosophy that has been pursued in creating this exhibition calls for empowering visitors to individually customize the degree of detail and the comprehensiveness of the information they confront.
About the Ars Electronica Futurelab
The Futurelab is the prototype of a new kind of media art R&D laboratory in which artistic and technological innovation drives reciprocal inspiration. Each of the lab’s working groups brings together a wide variety of skills; their approach to a project is characterized by interdisciplinarity and international networking. Conceiving and executing exhibitions and artistic installations as well as collaborations with university facilities and joint ventures with partners in the private sector frame the Futurelab’s broad spectrum of activities.
With queries, please contact Wolfgang Bednarzek, wolfgang.bednarzek@aec.at; 0664.81 26 156
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