ABC-Werkstatt & ABC-Gallery
Do/Thu, Fr/Fri, Sa/Sat, So/Sun, Mo/Mon 09:00 – 21:00
Ars Electronica Center, Foyer
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.