Datenvisualisierungsworkshop/Data Visualization Workshop with/mit SEED (US)
Fr/Fri 31. 8. 14:00 – 17:00

Führung/Guided Tour Japan Media Arts in THE BIG PICTURE mit/by Tomoe Moriyama (JP)
So/Sun 2. 9. 14:00 – 15:00

All the multifarious possibilities of visually representing people’s “Big Pictures” of the world—old ones long ago cast onto the junk heap of history and their hopeful young successors—are the subject of the featured exhibition in the Brucknerhaus that takes a wide array of conceptual approaches to the 2012 Ars Electronica Festival theme.

The earthquake in March 2011 and subsequent meltdown at the Fukushima atomic power plant fatefully changed the worldview of many Japanese. In the BIG PICTURE Exhibition, the Japan Media Arts Festival presents four prizewinning works that are more or less closely connected to the catastrophe. “micro sievert” by Jun Yoshihara, Yukihiro Ogawa, Kaoru Chono (JP) and Junko & Richard Holbrook (US) is an online visualization of the degree of radioactive contamination in the Kanto Region rendered in a way that laypeople can easily grasp.

One of the key variables on which public attention was riveted as the atomic radiation leaked into the atmosphere was the weather. “Tunagaru-TENKI” by Yoshiyuki Katayama (JP) makes its incessant change comprehensible via a monumental video that portrays the shift in the weather from August 2010 to July 2011.

Koichiro Tanaka, Eiji Tanigawa, Seiichi Saito, Masanori Sakamoto and Ken Murayama (JP) created the “Museum of Me” to depict in the form of an exhibition the fascinating dynamics of networks of personal relationships such as those on Facebook.

Nightmare or reality? “Ano-hi kara no Manga/Manga after 3.11.” are highly ambivalent cartoons by Manga artist Kotobuki Shiriagari (JP) who, as a volunteer helper in the disaster area, faced the full brunt of the deadly threat, and as a professional cartoonist for a newspaper still had to deliver chuckles galore on a daily basis.

“Syrian people know their way” (SY) is a coalition of men and women actively involved in cultural life in Syria who are using artistic means in various social media sites to support the efforts of their countrymen and -women to bring democracy to Syria. The group was honored with the Golden Nica in the Prix Ars Electronica’s Digital Communities category.

Cartoonist Hexie Farm (CN) was singled out for recognition with an Award of Distinction in the Prix Ars Electronica’s Digital Communities category for “Dark Glasses.Portrait,” a worldwide online campaign to support blind civil rights activist Chen Guangcheng, who was arrested for protesting against the brutal measures being used by government authorities to implement China’s one-child policy.

Another BIG PICTURE feature that’s also a Prix Ars Electronica prizewinner is the “Apertus Open Source Cinema” project dedicated to developing a high-performance open-source film camera.

The legendary Man in Black occupies the spotlight of the “Johnny Cash Project” by Aaron Koblin and Chris Milk (US). To realize it, hundreds of people each created their own personal Johnny Cash portrait and contributed it to this collectively produced animated music video.

Everyday Rebellion is an online platform set up by Arash and Arman Riahi (AT) to link up movements and bloggers all over the world who are using civil disobedience and nonviolence as their weapons in the struggle for peace and democracy. There are many examples to inspire site visitors to follow suit.

“Buckminster Fuller’s World Game Lab” by Enrique Guitart (AR), Thomas Thurner, Ronald Strasser and Günther Friesinger (AT) takes up the Dymaxion World Map, one of Fuller’s many ingenious inventions. It makes it possible to depict all sorts of global movements—migrations of people, shipments of goods, and other flows. Estimates and expert opinions of visitors to the BIG PICTURE Exhibition will be fed into this model to produce an hourly simulation of the development of the world.

The renowned science & technology portal Seed (US) is collaborating with visualizing.org on a collection of outstanding examples of how creatively data can be visually processed to generate really impressive BIG PICTURES.
The GeoPulse Beijing information platform developed by Michael Badics (AT), Ingrid Fischer-Schreiber (AT) and Yang Lei (CN) at the Ars Electronica Futurelab and at Tsinghua University (CN) together with cMoDA utilizes visually configured data, maps, statistics and videos to impressively get across what mobility means in Asian megalopolises.

The internet browser Global-Mind-Spirit by Manfred Litzlbauer (AT) can depict globally extant spiritual consciousness in relation to user-input search terms in the form of a map that resembles a radar screen.

Tsu-Na-Ga-Ri (Japanese: relationship), a complex, multi-part project by the Miraikan Museum (JP), fosters a new way of understanding the interrelationships at work within Earth’s ecosystems. Geo-Palette is an online tool that enables users to create world maps custom-tailored to their personal interests, and makes hundreds of themes and parameters available to do so.

Brain Art showcases prizewinners in the 2012 Brain-Art Competition that honors outstanding visualizations of brain research data. The works are by John Van Horn (US), Neda Jahanshad (US), Betty Lee (US), Daniel Margulies (US) and Alexander Schäfer (DE).

Google Street View images and Google Earth maps show the sunny side of life and the seamier side too: a pristine tropical beach and an oil spill, drug-addicted prostitutes plying their trade as well as lovers kissing amidst chaotic city life. Viewers have a big selection from which to choose.

Mishka Henner (BE) uses Google Street View photos in his artistic works. “No Man’s Land” shows street prostitutes in Italy; “Oil Fields” and “Cattle Farms” are composed of high-resolution individual images that testify to environmental exploitation and destruction.

“Paris Street View” evokes a more hopeful mood. To create it, Michael Wolf (DE) used Google to find images that capture intensely personal moments.

The Ars Electronica Archive is unveiling a new look and multimedia content online at this year’s festival. ExplorARS invites festivalgoers to take a seat at a multi-touch table and take a tour through the history of Ars Electronica via videos, stills and other material.

Q&A mit/with Peter Sasovsky (Heaven + Earth + Joe Davis / US)
Sa/Sat 1. 9. 15:30 – 16:00
So/Sun 2. 9. 15:30 – 16:00

Q&A mit/with Sebastian Frisch (Whisper Down The Lane / DE)
Fr/Fri 31.8. 13:00 – 13:30
Sa/Sat 1. 9. 17:00 – 17:30

The BIG PICTURE Cinema screens films that feature literally inimitable images of the world, and showcase human beings whose work crosses borders in amazing and inspiring ways and brings to light new ways of seeing things in the process.

“Heaven + Earth + Joe Davis” by Peter Sasowsky (US) is a portrait of Joe Davis (US), a fascinating scientist, researcher and artist who as a matter of principle ignores all academic boundaries and seamlessly combines artistic practice with scientific work. Ars Electronica has once again honored him for an outstanding work in 2012. His experiments and achievements have included using the vaginal contractions of ballet dancers as a means of communicating with aliens in outer space, translating poetry into DNA, and creating a sculpture to save the world.

On October 10, 2010, 19,000 people in 160 countries cinematically documented episodes, events and moments in their lives and made the footage available to serve as elements of the largest collaborative film ever made. “One Day on Earth” by Kyle Ruddick (US) interweaves the tragedies and triumphs, heartbreaking conflicts and moments of love occurring simultaneously worldwide into a “Big Picture” of humankind.

In “Passage 2011,” Christian Schoen (DE) documents the wacky trans-Alpine journey of two German artists to attend the Venice Biennale. During a torturous three-week trek that was by no means short on rain and snow, Wolfgang Aichner and Thomas Huber (DE) schlepped a homemade boot on a route that included the Schlegeis Glacier at an altitude of over 3,000 meters.

In “Whisper Down the Lane,” a group of Salzburg students headed by Sebastian Frisch (DE) confront the half-truths and rumors about HIV and AIDS that circulate in many African countries. The victims of this information deficit are, above all, women and children. The film is part of a sensitive consciousness-raising campaign.

Dissatisfied with how her country’s mass media was reporting on the Arab Spring, Austrian high school student Agnes Aistleitner traveled at her own expense to Egypt to talk to people on the streets and in marketplaces, and to form her own picture of what was happening. The video she made, “State of Revolution,” garnered her the Golden Nica in the 2012 Prix Ars Electronica’s u19 category.

“This is a Recorded Message” is still a highly relevant statement critical of our consumption-oriented times. This short animated film made in 1973 by filmmaker Jean-Thomas Bédard (CA) and composer Alain Clavier (CA) is on the Big Concert Night program.

One of BIG PICTURE Cinema’s focal-point themes is the pioneering work of Canadian experimental filmmaker Arthur Lipsett (1936-86), whose meticulously edited, collage-like short films strongly influenced Stanley Kubrick, George Lucas and other great directors. “Very Nice, Very Nice” is an avant-garde work featuring brilliant interplay of photography and sound. “Trip Down Memory Lane” works with 50 years of odd headlines to create an explosive remake of the past. “21-87” focuses on the individual in a very spiritual way and is considered Lipsett’s masterpiece.

Tomoe Moriyama (JP) leads through the THE BIG PICTURE – Exhibition.

Join us for a hands-on workshop on the semantics of graphical representations and the aesthetics of information design, covering both conceptual and practical dimensions of the craft.

Theoretical discussions will cover subjects such as how to use the space of the canvas, what the legend means, as well as what colors, shapes and patterns are suitable for representing a variety of data types. In the practical part of the workshop, we will guide participants through the creation of a data visualization sketch using javascript libraries. Based on a dataset that is provided, each participant will create a network visualization.

Capacity: 20 people
Requirements: Participants are expected to bring their own laptops. Basic programming skills are required. Javascript knowledge is a plus.
Duration: 3 hours

The workshop is in English.

Please send your registration to pia.stoeffelbauer@aec.at.

Mahir Yavuz — Workshop Leader
Mahir M. Yavuz is Design Technologist at Seed. He is a PhD candidate in Interface Culture at the University of Art and Design Linz. He worked as a lead designer and art director in various projects in Istanbul (2000-2006) and as a senior researcher in information design at the Ars Electronica Futurelab (2006-2011). He has given lectures and workshops on information design and visualization at universities in Turkey, Austria, Canada, and the US (2003-2011). His work has been exhibited in international festivals and exhibitions across Europe and the US.