All the target-group-specific offerings that make up this year’s program designed to mediate visitors encounters with festival content having to do with the “Human Nature” theme focus on a concept invented by Paul Crutzen: the Anthropocene Age, a time in which we human beings exert ever-greater influence on our planet, assume what is tantamount to control over it, and thus have more and more influence on society and our natural environment. Achievements in genetic engineering and biotechnology emerge from the depths of the laboratory and are changing our everyday life as well as the entire spectrum of forms of artistic expression. Many questions remain open and some problems still haven’t been cleared up, but cloning and experimentation goes on, boldly and unabated. Plus, to mark the 30th anniversary of the Ars Electronica Festival, we’ll also be taking a few retrospective looks at comparable projects, ideas, exhibitions and personalities of the past. And doing so while we continue to peer far into the future. The key issue: What will this new human-engendered nature look like and what undreamt-of possibilities and niches exist for us human beings within it?

See all events of we guide you 2009

Opening:
Thu 3. 9. 15:00

Exhibition:
Thu 3. 9. – Tue 8. 9. 10:00 – 19:00

Campus, Kunstuniversität Hauptplatz

Curated by Hiroshi Ishii (US) & Amanda Parkes (US)
A cooperation of Ars Electronica, University of Art and Industrial Design Linz and MIT Media Lab/US.

Certainly we cannot hope to solve the problems facing us without a greater understanding of the modern world, based on the integration of knowledge. Humanists must be educated with a deep appreciation of modern science. Scientists and engineers must be steeped in humanistic learning. And all learning must be linked with a broad concern for the complex effects of technology on our evolving culture.

Jerome B. Wiesner (Co-founder, MIT Media Laboratory, 1915–1994)

The 2009 Ars Electronica Campus Exhibition features current work of the faculty and students from the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge MA. From its inception almost thirty years ago, the Media Lab has taken an unorthodox research approach to envisioning the impact of emerging technologies on everyday life—technologies that promise to fundamentally transform our most basic notions of human capabilities. The lab attracts designers, computer designers, engineers, artists, and scientists, divergent in background and practice. However, unifying the people of the lab is a particular kind of passion, momentum, drive—the IMPETUS—to create and innovate for change. The depth and breadth of the Media Lab’s research areas transcend traditional technology, design or art environments and the lab can be thought of as an ongoing experiment, both physical and intellectual, in facilitating innovation, collaboration and critique. It is an environment where inspiration arises from difference and where the driving force behind creation comes from an inherently transdisciplinary approach.

The MIT Media Lab consists of 30 different research groups including the diverse disciplines of interactivity, robotics, artificial intelligence, education, nanotechnology, music, neuroengineering, material science, visualization, social networking, urban infrastructure, fabrication, and political art all intermingling in joint spaces, courses and projects. Students at the Media Lab generally arrive with a particular area of expertise, but are encouraged to explore new domains to enrich and expand their perspective on their research. In many ways, time spent at the Media Lab becomes an education on the process of innovating in itself. The goal of the lab’s work is to develop technologies that empower people of all ages, from all walks of life, in all societies, to design and invent new possibilities for themselves and their communities. Unique to the lab’s structure is our pairing with industry sponsors who support the lab’s research in a shared intellectual property model and keep the lab connected to the real world issues of the corporate community and society at large.

The idea for the Media Lab came into being in 1980 by Professor Nicholas Negroponte and former MIT President and Science Advisor to President John F. Kennedy, Jerome Wiesner. The Lab grew out of the work of MIT’s Architecture Machine Group, and remains within MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning. The Media Lab opened the doors to its I. M. Pei-designed Wiesner Building in 1985, and in its first decade was at the vanguard of the technology that enabled the “digital revolution” and enhanced human expression: innovative research ranging from cognition and learning, to electronic music, to holography. In its second decade, the Lab literally took computing out of the box, embedding the bits of the digital realm with the atoms of our physical world. This led to expanded research in wearable computing, wireless “viral” communications, machines with common sense, new forms of artistic expression and innovative approaches to how children learn.

Now, in its third decade, the Media Lab continues to check traditional disciplines at the door. This fall, we will expand into a new building, a Fumihiko Maki-designed atelier style addition to our current space, where we will continue to move forward concept driven research, inventing—and reinventing—how humans experience, and can be aided by, technology.

The Campus exhibition at Ars Electronica features a sampling of current and recent work from the lab—an intersection of cutting edge technology with an appreciation for the power of design and aesthetics to metamorphize an interactive experience, and the desire to position work within a broader social infrastructure to better understand the effects of technology, for better or worse, on the fabric of society. Three subthemes have emerged for this exhibition—community, humanity and materiality—which broadly encompass the conceptual focus of our research and present a cross over between a humanist perspective so central to our approach and the engineering and science for which MIT is so famous.

Community

The development of new media technologies has brought about a revolution in the way we communicate and share knowledge. In recent years the lab has focused on several systems that empower and democratize access to information and reformulate social infrastructure physically and virtually. Some of the systems feature novel methods of mapping information to physicality and temporality while others look at urban transportation and energy processes. Lab researchers have also developed physical and digital platforms that encourage creativity through ease of accessibility to knowledge, transforming educational methods for all ages. Through products and tools that scaffold the process of creation of technologies by amateurs, the lab has helped in fostering the DIY initiative in communities of open source and participatory design. Key to this initiative is the concept of collective intelligence, aggregating knowledge of a diverse community of experts, and allowing for the formation of virtual communities that were never before possible. IMPETUS presents projects that explore how digital technologies have changed our access to and interpretation of information, and in turn empowered the process of learning, making, doing and understanding.

Humanity

Technology has created systems for human augmentation that allow us to expand our physical and sensory capabilities and we have grown accustomed to living in an environment where our digital devices function as an extension of ourselves, both in ability and perception. The design of technological systems with artificial intelligence pushes these boundaries further, where our devices also become a reflection of ourselves—we adapt to technology and in turn create technology that adapts to us. The notion of our relationship with technology is metamorphosizing as the boundary between technology as human augmentation or outside entity shifts, blurring the line between when technological systems become part of us, and where they remain an ‘other.’ Robotic creations appeal to responses deeply rooted in our human nature, creating a dialogue to persuade, calm, assist or delight, through varying states of anthropomorphized forms and actions, while a vanguard media production questions what it means to be human in the context of an increasingly digital world. Through varying investigative methods, the featured projects seek to challenge and pursue critical inquiry into understanding our own humanity and identity in the context of technology.

Materiality

For all the new dimensions the virtual world has brought us, we still intuitively delight in the physical—the tactile, the graspable, the tangible, the material—allowing us to utilize all of our senses and our inherent bodily knowledge of the world around us. For over a decade, the Media Lab has been at the forefront of understanding and innovating on technology’s place within the built environment and the significance of physicality in our experience with digital systems. The idea of *Tangible Bits* was born at the Media Lab, seamlessly coupling the physical and digital world. In many ways, the Media Lab itself embodies the sense of the importance of physicality; it is a culture of learning by doing, a kinesthetic approach by which the physical output of endeavors can embody ideas beyond the imagination. In future visions of interactivity such as programmable matter and radical atoms, material science on the nanoscale begins to merge with concepts of interactivity, envisioning physical materials that are as malleable, programmable, and dynamic as pixels on a screen. Central to the notion of new materiality is also the innovation of fabrication processes that go along with creation, questioning how changing the process of making things also changes the things we make. For the lab’s designers, artists and scientists working on novel methods of combining computation and materiality, the challenge becomes how to expand our notion of the possibilities of the material world while creating experiences that remain familiar, comfortable and engaging.

Like everything at the MIT Media Lab, the works presented transcend any one category and show a fusion of the artists’ viewpoint, knowledge and personal motivations. Through IMPETUS, we invite you to experience and interpret the diversity and essence of our community.

See all projects of IMPETUS: Works from the MIT Media Lab

Sat 5.9.
10:00 AM – 12:30 PM Uhr Kunstuniversität, Kollegiumgasse 2

At the Crossroads of Media Arts&Science and Technology
Education in the 21st Century-What is to be Done?

http://forum.lefnet.org/hello

Update on the Leonardo Education Forum’s mission and activities. Arts, science, design, technology, computer science and communication studies are key disciplines brought together in contemporary media arts, however relevant technologies develop rapidly and often separately from educational institutions. Consequently, a gap exists between the technological developments and their application in formal education worldwide at academic institutions as well as at middle school level and in hybrid educational scenarios.

Presentation of “Media Design” the new Teacher Training Programme for secondary schools of the University of Art and Industrial Design, Linz (www.ufg.ac.at).

Target group / Participants: educators, artists, scientists, policy makers in the field, general public
Invited speakers: Christa Sommerer (AT) & Laurent Mignonneau (FR), Nicoletta Blacher (AT), Mindaugas Gapševičius (D), Patricia Olynyk (US) tbc, Erika Katalina Pasztor (HU), Angelika Plank (AT)
Organisers: Nina Czegledy (HU), Daniela Reimann (D/AT), Lynn Hughes (CA)
Hosts: Ars Electronica Center and Kunstuniversität Linz (Department of Art Education, Department of Interface Cultures)

Kunstuniversität, Kollegiumgasse 2

The Initiative to Create Our Tomorrow MASS CREATIVITY: How the power of “we & technology” transforms the economic world

http://missionfuture.trendpool.com/

By invitation only

The third MISSION FUTURE @ ARS ELECTRONICA will address the „creative mass“. It´s a fact that the „creative class“, proclaimed by Richard Florida five years ago, transformed itself into a majority. Digitally upgraded, these knights of the Twitter Round Table change our world and economy in breathtaking speed. The old boxing rule “do or die” seems to be their guideline when they organize their civil disobedience in Iran overnight or when the anti-copyright-movement Pirate Bay becomes the nightmare of the music- and movie industry. The power of the creative mass gets obvious when an individual like Aston Kutcher gathers one million followers faster then CNN.

Intelligent brands like Apple, Mini, Nokia or Adidas use the potential of these co-creators, formerly known as consumers. But more than that an entire new type of innovative enterprises show up based on tools like Linux, Java, Wikipedia, Facebook und App Store. The creative mass lives their own rules: “The bit …. (information, music, video, art, design, object, company) I need I create for myself.“ The creative mass makes that happen supported by fabricators, kind of personal nano-factories. Mission Future will scrutinize in detail with it´s speakers how this creative world of tomorrow will look like.

Morning Session:

Christoph Santner (future-expert and co-founder Mission Future) and Philippe Souidi (trend-expert and co-founder Mission Future):
10 trends that will shape our future

Lectures, discussions and breakout sessions see http://missionfuture.trendpool.com/

This conference will be followed by a performance of the social art project think new (Gabi Lück) including a concert of Anna F. and Lima.

Kunstuniversität, Kollegiumgasse 2

Archives and collections of media art are closely related to the institution’s profile and mandate. Within the workshop experts discuss the significance of the institutional setting with respect to the creation of the repositories and their future perspectives. Additionally, on the basis of recent research activities, experts and artists present new ways of documentation of media art which tend to integrate the user experience into a documentation strategy for media art works – or even into the works themselves. On this occasion the new European online portal, the Gateway to Archives of Media Art (GAMA), is launched and presented.

Speakers:
Annet Dekker (Virtueel Platform, NL), Anna-Karin Larsson (Filmform Foundation, SE), Lioba Reddeker (basis wien, AT) Gerfried Stocker (Ars Electronica, AT), Matt Adams (Blast Theory, GB), Gabriella Giannachi (University of Exeter, GB), Caitlin Jones (Free curator and media theorist, US), Lizzie Muller (University of Technology Sydney, AU), Eva Kozma (C3 Center for Culture Communication Foundation, HU)
Moderators: Katja Kwastek (Ludwig Boltzmann Medien.Kunst.Forschung., AT), Andreas Spiegl (Akademie der Bildenden Künste Wien, AT);
Concept: Gabriele Blome (Ludwig Boltzmann Institut Medien.Kunst.Forschung., AT) and Gaby Wijers (Nederlands Instituut Voor Mediakunst, NL).

Opening:
Thu 3.9.2009 3.30 PM

Opening hours:
Thu 3.9. -Tue 8.9. 10.00 AM – 7.00 PM

DIY Style Interaction Projects by Interface Cultures Student Projects at Ars Electronica 2009
Curated by Christa Sommerer (AT) & Laurent Mignonneau (AT)

Christa Sommerer, Laurent Mignonneau, Dietmar Offenhuber, Michaela Ortner, Varvara Guljajeva

This year’s student projects from the Interface Cultures study department show a variety of interactive projects and prototypes that have been developed in the past study year. Topics circle around interactive art, audio-visual installations, wearable technology projects, gaming interfaces, information visualization and conceptual works. Weibel states in 2008: “Artists, in the age of Youtube.com, Flickr.com, MySpace.com, and Second Life, lose their monopoly on creativity. Using contemporary media everyone can be artistically creative.”¹ In our department we can observe a strong movement in the direction of do-it-yourself (=DIY) style interface projects. Artists and designers here often engage in short-time collaborations and share their code and interface designs on the Internet with a peer community. We however also observe a trend towards more traditional notions of art where the idea is to create unique pieces of interactive art that convey a strong artistic and conceptual message. It is within this dichotomy of the totally open and the rather closed system that we have to see the works presented in this year’s student exhibition.

For the format of the exhibition organization we have chosen to use the metaphor of DIY all the way. Students not only manage their own projects but also collaboratively organize the exhibition design, the curational direction, the flyers, posters and promotional materials. As an exhibition theme, the topic of “The Royal Interface Culture Masquerade Ball” was chosen by the students. From red carpets to Victorian-style frames, white ‘theatre’ masks worn around the exhibition (= the ball) by the visitors, to evening wear worn by students. This year’s theme is to juxtapose modern technology with an old-style ball set-up to create a somewhat opulent atmosphere where new and old meet. Enter into a continuous masquerade only to be trapped by your desires. The main exhibition hall affords guests a place of respite during the festival, with lush tables and chairs and performances by artists throughout the day. This year’s theme is to juxtapose modern technology with an old-style ball set-up to create a somewhat opulent atmosphere where new and old meet.

The outcome of this exhibition is a learning process in itself. It should sensitize students to how complex it is to create scenarios for the presentation of interactive projects, which challenge the audience in areas such as art, scenography and interaction design. As hosts of The 1st Inaugural Royal Interface Culture Ball we invite you to experience opulent spaces, art, performance and anonymity.

¹ Peter Weibel, YOU_niverse, exhibition catalogue, Sevilla: “Bienal de Arte Contemporaneo de Sevilla”, “Fundacionbiacs”, 2008, 16-26

See all projects of The Royal Interface Culture Masquerade Ball