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GOODBYE PRIVACY - The Bottom Line of Ars Electronica 2007
31,500 visitors, 530 artists and scientists, 533 journalists. Despite terrible weather that necessitated a few program changes on very short notice during the first two days, a performance assessment of this year's Ars Electronica comes up positive across the board. The Second City experiment got rave reviews from international guests and locals alike.
(Linz, September 11, 2007) Eight umbrellas arranged in a circle, opening and closing in time to the music of “Singin’ in the Rain”—a scene from Peter William Holden’s Autogene is what some festivalgoers might have been reminded of during the first two days of Ars Electronica 2007. Rain, including occasional downpours, necessitated a few program changes on short notice, but the only cancellation was “Night in the Sky,” an all-nighter that was to have been pulled on the roof of a downtown parking deck. “All of Linz – A Group Portrait from Above” has been rescheduled for Saturday, September 15 from 10 AM to 2 PM.
The “Second City” Experiment: A Resounding Success
Nevertheless, it wasn’t the inclement weather but the fundamental orientation of the festival that constituted this year's biggest challenge. The artistic takeover of the public sphere on Marienstraße and Pfarrplatz meant that the Ars Electronica Staff had to master technical and logistic tasks on an unprecedented scale. Numerous premises even had to be renovated, plastered and painted before the technical infrastructure required to conjure up Second City could be installed and hooked up. The tremendous team effort that went into this made the enthusiastic response to Second City on the part of international guests and, above all, regional visitors that much more gratifying. “Our idea of shifting the festival into the public sphere worked really well in spite of the bad weather,” said Ars Electronica Artistic Director Gerfried Stocker. “The concept of Second City was an essential contribution to providing—in a new and very creative way—a visible manifestation of the content and issues that this festival has been dealing with. And not just for festivalgoers, but for the local population as well.”
More than Memories
The “More than Memories” opening event kicked off this year's Ars Electronica with one of the festival’s absolute highlights. Hundreds of visitors to Linz’s Botanical Garden braved a cloudburst to hear dramatic readings from banned literature. Then, Kurt Hentschläger’s FEED took festivalgoers to the limits of perception and orientation—a truly unforgettable experience!
Judges Conference
Ars Electronica worked together with the Austrian Judges Association for the first time this year to stage the “Fundamental Rights in Digital Worlds” conference. The outcome of this collaborative effort was a series of very interesting addresses, panels and workshops that featured top experts from around the world. The final verdict was a favorable one from attendees and media outlet reps alike.
The Goodbye Privacy Symposium, the Pixelspaces Conference, the conclaves hosted by the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute Media.Art.Research and Radio FRO, as well as the other conferences, panel discussions and addresses were very well received by festivalgoers.
Exhibitions
Among the top highlights of this year's festival were several especially excellent and correspondingly well attended exhibitions. Particularly noteworthy were the new installations in the Ars Electronica Center, the CyberArts show in the recently reopened O.K Center for Contemporary Art, and the Pixelspaces Exhibition on Marienstraße. The projects presented by Marko Peljhan (Featured Artist 07) at the Lentos Museum of Art also attracted intense interest.
“All of Linz – A Group Portrait from Above” on Saturday, September 15
Due to low-lying cloud cover, the surveillance photo shoot planned for September 8 had to be postponed to this coming Saturday, September 15 from 10 AM to 2 PM. All Linzers - including the 150 project crews who announced themselves to Ars Electronica - are invited to take part.
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