The Cloud in the Web tells the story of our increasingly networked world from the first telephone to Facebook & Co. Hundreds of firefighters, industrial robots, water cannons, oarsmen and illuminated carrier pigeons are only a few of this play’s protagonists. Making their international debut will be a swarm of Klangwolke quadrocopters, four-rotor drone whirlybirds cruising above the audience.

Website voestalpine Klangwolke

10:00 – 11:00 Klangwolkenminiaturen Original I: Frühschoppen
11:00 – 11:30 Klangwolkenminiaturen: Jingles & Dance Flashmob
11:30 – 12:00 OÖ Nachrichten Klangwolkenminiaturen Original II: So klingt Oberösterreich
12:30 – 13.30 Klangwolkenminiaturen Original III: Mittagshitze
13:30 – 14:00 Remix 1: Matthias Bergsmann (AT)
14:00 – 15:00 Klangwolkenminiaturen Original IV: Kaffee und Kuchen
15:00 – 15:30 Remix 2: Klangwolkenminiaturenkomposition – Marco Palewicz (AT)
15:30 – 16:30 Klangwolkenminiaturen Original V: Happy Hour
15:30 – 16:00 Missing Character
16:30 – 17:00 Remix 3 – Live: Chris Bruckmayr (AT), Michael Kaczorowski (AT), Marco Palewicz (AT), Maximilian Walch (AT)
17:00 – 18:00 FM4 Wall of Sound
18:00 – 19:00 DJ Kristian Davideck (FM4)
Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz, Freiraum
19:30 – 20:00: HEAVYLISTENING (DE): Tiefdruckgebiet

The Picnic in the Cloud, Part II of the 2012 voestalpine Klangwolke, is set for the day after the big show. Everyone’s invited to bring snacks and a blanket to the Donaupark between the Brucknerhaus and the Lentos Art Museum.

Thousands of people from Linz, from Upper Austria and all over the world have been busy producing soundcloudminiatures—pieces of music, sounds, noise, whatever. The best of these personal puffs of the cloud of sound will resound through the relaxed atmosphere of Linz’s beautiful downtown riverside park via the show’s superb sound system. A big Sound Picnic Blanket will take the place of a stage.

The day’s program also includes a repeat performance of the previous evening’s highlights.

The show begins at 10 AM with soundcloudminiatures arranged in categories—both the originals and a remix by sound artist Matthias Bergsmann (AT), a prizewinner in the Prix Ars Electronica’s u19 – CREATE YOUR WORLD category. The climax of the urban game Missing Character will serve as a sort of interlude. Marco Palewicz (AT), Chris Bruckmayr (AT), Maximilian Walch (AT) and Michael Kaczorowski (AT) will then continue with live remixes of the miniatures on into the evening.

At 5 PM, FM4 will take over the controls. A once-in-a-lifetime live-spectacle will not just capture your imagination, it will set your booty in motion as you experience the FM4 Wall of Sound featuring Kristian Davidek and Bauchklang’s Andi Fraenzl. Kristian Davidek has quite the reputation for phenomenally entertaining DJ-sets, not just music-wise either. Now, he will be joined by the Human Beatbox Virtuoso Andi Fraenzl for a live audio experience you are bound to never forget. A very special duo, a decidedly different performance and a singular outing—all to be had at the Donaupark and as a prelude to even more ear-candy in the form of a series of concerts being held afterwards at the Brucknerhaus.

At 7:30, Berlin Duo HEAVYLISTENING and their pimped-out rides will generate a low-pressure area as a lead-in to the Big Evening Concert in the Brucknerhaus.

A Pixelspaces 2012 session is dedicated to the making of The Cloud in the Web with particular emphasis on the spaxels

The deadline for adding another letter to this huge alphabet isn’t until just about the last minute. You can craft yours at the ABC Workshop, in the comfort of your own home, or at an OTELO open technology lab in Gmunden, Vöcklabruck and Kremstal. Components are available free of charge at all ABC Check-in Stations, where you can also register your finished letter and get it equipped with a radio receiver.

Yoshihiro Harano (JP), Koichiro Mikuriya (JP), Tomofumi Okada (JP)

“Amanogawa” will be one of the aesthetic highlights of The Cloud in the Web. In it, 50,000 Inori Boshi®—floating LED balls 8.5 cm in diameter—will be swept downstream by the Danube’s current. Constructed especially for “Amanogawa” and charged by solar energy, the balls emit a light blue glow as soon as they come into contact with water. They stand for the diversity of cultures along the Danube. The multitude of stars in this terrestrial Milky Way symbolically carry the wishes and hopes of the visitors to the 2012 voestalpine Klangwolke out into the world, and, conversely, call upon these people to experience the Danube and water in a new way and to bring a new appreciation to the river.

Dem Making-of der Wolke im Netz mit besonderem Augenmerk auf die Spaxels ist ein Teil der Pixelspaces 2012 gewidmet

On Sunday, September 2nd, all submitted soundcloudminiatures will suffuse downtown Linz via the Klangwolke’s 250,000-watt sound system.

All Klangwolke letter designers who just can’t delay gratification any longer can gather on the Ars Electronica Center’s Maindeck on September 1st at 5 PM. Everyone’s invited! With voestalpine’s own marching band leading the way, a parade of people and letters will proceed across the Nibelungen Bridge to the Lentos Art Museum. Then it’s on via Pfarrplatz, Marienstraße and the Passage shopping mall to OK-Platz, where the colorful procession cuts through Ursulinenhof and makes a right onto Landstraße. Around 6 PM, the Klangwolke caravan converges on the Mobile Ö1 Atelier on Linz’s Main Square, where terpsichorean troops ranging from hip-hoppers to folk dancers will display their individualize choreographies in which letters coalesce into words. The best of these performances will be reprised shortly thereafter before a much larger audience. The groups will strut their stuff in the main event—the 2012 voestalpine Klangwolke.

Complete information about the 2012 voestalpine Klangwolke will be available during the days leading up to the big event at the ABC Check-in Stations. And that’s not all: Anybody who’d like to participate can buy an illuminated letter, the first one costs 8 €, every next one 5 €.

Right up to the last minute, those who have already completed their letters can register them here and equip them with a radio receiver.

This is where you can get access to six workspaces, any one of 26 (A-Z) letter kits and various other materials to use in fashioning your letters. It’s all free of charge and available any time during the Museum of the Future’s opening hours. Groups of up to 15 can preregister for their own ABC Workshop by sending an e-mail to center@aec.at or by calling +43.732.7272.51.

To serve as inspiration for the next wave of creative tinkerers, the letters will then go on display in the ABC Showcase on the 1st Upper Level or in the ABC Gallery in the Lobby, which is also where you can pick up your letters—complete with a radio receiver—beginning on August 13th.

CharacterBook

ars.electronica.art/klangwolke/participate/soundcloud-abc/abc-gallery/
Each letter produced in the Ars Electronica Center’s ABC Workshop is photographed on site together with its creator, and these colorful portraits immediately become part of the ABC Gallery on the voestalpine Klangwolke website. People who create their letters at home or in one of the OTELOs can photograph their work themselves and upload the pictures to the website. The Ars Wild Card iPhone app is a great way to do it.
The CharacterBook assembled online offers letter designers the opportunity to get in contact with their peers and to exchange e-mails with one another in a colorful Klangwolke script that consists of all registered letters.
ars.electronica.art/klangwolke/en/participate/soundcloud-abc/abc-nachricht.

ABC-Showcase

Ars Electronica Center

The ABC Showcase is an exhibition space, experimentation lab and inspiration source all in one. A small sample of previously constructed letters is on display here. They’re also available for visitors to use when leaving behind a message. And there are examples of how people down through the ages have adorned letters by hand, and how the alphabet has excited the human imagination. Plus, you can use the Bavarian State Library’s iPad application to admire magnificent old manuscripts, as well as interactive software that lets you compose images with letters of all shapes and sizes or transform your own handwriting into a personal digital typeface.