Ever since he was young, dancer, choreographer and inventor Huang Yi (TW) has been interested in the relationship—you could even say partnership—between humans and robots. He integrates photography, videos and mechanical elements into his pieces, which blend dance, a diversified visual world, technology and machines into choreographies in which both form and content go far beyond the conventional repertoire of the performing arts. Huang Yi thinks of himself as a dancing instrument. The continuous movements in his pieces correspond to the flow of data.

Dancing like a Machine

In the prizewinning three-minute performance entitled Huang Yi & KUKA, Huang Yi’s dance partner is a robot produced by the German manufacturer KUKA:.
“Dancing face to face with a KUKA robot is like looking at my face in a mirror. I make KUKA mimic my movements, and I learn from him, I make myself dance like a machine.”

Ars Electronica Gala
Fri 6. 9. 21:30
Brucknerhaus, Großer Saal

Supported by KUKA
In cooperaton with Quanta Arts Foundation

The human brain is an extraordinarily complex organ containing several billion nerve cells and several times that many connections and synapses
among those cells. Sure, size matters, but it’s the interplay—the so­called connectome—that determines our mentality and our personality. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) makes it possible to depict a portion of this network of nerves in a living person’s brain. This enables neurologists to, among other things, recognize interrelationships in the brain and understand thought processes. This MRI Tour of Linz General Hospital will show how it works.

Sat 7. 9. 12:00 – 13:00, 14:00 – 15:00
Meeting Place: Brucknerhaus, Infodesk
Fee: € 10; for holders of a festival pass: € 5

Careless dealings with one’s personal data and, in many cases, an almost obsessive urge to expose one’s private affairs in public social networks motivated artist Doris Graf (DE) to take action. For her Pikträts, she interviews internet users—including visitors to the Ars Electronica Festival. She impudently pries into precisely those data that social websites prefer to gather with soberly worded online forms, and then depicts the qualities and characteristics of her interlocutors in the form of pictograms. Framed and arranged in rows and columns, the Pikträts clearly reveal the extent to which human individuality on the internet—despite all promises of personality development—is reduced to a few facts for the purpose of economic utility.

Panel 1

Fri 6. 9. 10:00 – 13:30
Brucknerhaus

Following opening remarks by Ars Electronica artistic director Gerfried Stocker, the first session will begin with a look at and inside the site of human memory: our brain. Neuroscientist John Dylan Haynes will provide an introduction to the latest research on cognition and the brain. He’ll screen selected scenes from some classic science-fiction films—including “Total Recall,” of course—to portray the current state of research in neuroscience and future prospects in this field.

From Remembering to Forgetting

Mapping the network of nerves in the human brain will be the subject of a speech by neuroscientist Alfred Anwander of the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences. He’ll report on diffusion tensor imaging and connectome research, methods scientists are now using to better understand human memory.

In light of these insights into the latest research into the brain, the symposium will turn to the selective character of remembrance and the various forms of forgetting.

Aleida Assmann, a scholar in the fields of literary studies, will analyze the omnipresence of the past, which, thanks to new media and virtually unlimited data storage capabilities, can be accessed anytime, anywhere.
Arno Villringer, likewise a staff neuroscientist at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, will then discuss the loss of memory and go into dementia from neurological and clinical perspectives, and author/interpreter Helga Rohra, a woman suffering from Lewy Body Dementia, will give an account of daily life with this condition.

10:00 – 10:20 Intro GS
10:20 – 11:00 John-Dylan Haynes
11:00 – 11:30 Aleida Assmann
11:30 – 11:55 Alfred Anwander
11:55 – 12:25 Q+A und Pause
12:25 – 12:50 Arno Villringer
12:50 – 13:15 Helga Rohra
13:15 – 13:30 Q+A

Fri 6. 9. 10:00 – 13:30
Brucknerhaus

Panel 2

Fri 6. 9. 14:30 – 18:00
Brucknerhaus

The second session begins with a consideration of nature’s memory, DNA. Biochemist Barbara Hohn will discuss the genetic and epigenetic memory of animals and plants, and particularly elaborate on how they pass on what they remember—from leaf to leaf, for instance, or from parent to offspring.

Mathematician and zoologist Nick Goldman teams up with artist Charlotte Jarvis to consider the prospects of someday using DNA as the perfect data storage medium. And nobody’s better qualified than Goldman, who was a member of a research group that succeeded in converting an mp3 file into DNA and back again.

Cognitive Computing

Another view of the future of memory focuses on the vision of someday being able to computer model human memory. The Synapse Project in the US and the Human Brain Project in Europe are at the forefront. Can a computer learn how a human being thinks? Dharmendra S. Modha, a cognitive computing specialist at IBM, is convinced of this. Via teleconference, he’ll report on his work on computer systems modeled on the human brain.

The many major challenges that have to be overcome in order to simulate the human brain are the grounds for a more skeptical view of this undertaking by Hans Ulrich Dodt, an expert in medicine, physics and bio-electronics at the Vienna University of Technology (AT).

To conclude the first day of the symposium, we’ll return to the neurosciences as well as to art. Rodrigo Quian Quiroga, head of the University of Leicester’s NeuroEngineering Lab, will talk about his research on so-called concept cells—often referred to as Jennifer Aniston neurons—and tell about how his research brought him to the works of the great Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges.

14:30 – 15:00 Barbara Hohn
15:00 – 15:25 Nick Goldman
15:25 – 15:50 Charlotte Jarvis
15:50 – 16:20 Q+A und Pause
16:20 – 16:40 Dharmendra Modha (Tele-Talk)
16:40 – 17:10 Hans-Ulrich Dodt
17:10 – 17:40 Rodrigo Quian Quiroga
17:40 – 18:00 Diskussion

Moderation: Michael Doser (AT/CH)

Fri 6. 9. 14:30 – 18:00
Brucknerhaus

Panel 3

Sun 8. 9. 14:30 – 17:00
Brucknerhaus

The third session will consider the cultural and technological history of memory recording devices. Claudia Schmölders, a scholar in the field of cultural studies, will present her impressive research on the presence or absence of female voices in historical sound archives. Media philosopher Frank Hartmann will take symposium participants back to the early history of Information Society—to the fantastic lifework of Paul Otlet and his ground-breaking prototype of a universal library that’s often called the first forerunner of the internet. Michael Buckland, professor emeritus at UC Berkeley, will recall another pioneer of modern information processing, Emanuel Goldberg. Catapulting us back into the present will be Hiroshi Ishiguro, the star of Japanese robotics research. He’s using robots and androids to preserve the memory of an extraordinary Japanese actor.

14:30 – 15:00 Claudia Schmölders
15:00 – 15:30 Frank Hartmann
15:30 – 15:45 Q+A
15:45 – 16:15 Michael Buckland
16:15 – 16:45 Hiroshi Ishiguro
16:45 – 17:00 Diskussion

Moderation: Xaver Forthuber (AT)

Sun 8. 9. 14:30 – 17:00
Brucknerhaus

Participants

Alfred Anwander (DE) is a neuroscientist and connectome researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig who is making important contributions to research on anatomic linkages with an emphasis on language networks in the brain and learning to speak.

Aleida Assmann (DE) is a neuroscientist and connectome researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig who is making important contributions to research on anatomic linkages with an emphasis on language networks in the brain and learning to speak.

Michael K. Buckland (UK/US) is Emeritus Professor, University of California, Berkeley, School of Information. He has written extensively about library services, the organization of knowledge, and the history documentation.

Hans Ulrich Dodt (DE) is professor of solid body electronics at the Vienna University of Technology. He uses optical methods to visualize nerve cells and take 3-D flights through the transparent brain. In his interdisciplinary research field, bioelectronics, he applies approaches from astronomy to problems in neuroscience.

Nick Goldman (UK) works at the European Bioinformatics Institute in Hinxton (UK), researching algorithms to study genome evolution. He holds degrees in mathematics and zoology from the University of Cambridge.

Frank Hartmann (DE) is a media philosopher and professor at the Faculty of Art & Design, Bauhaus-University Weimar, Germany. He has published several book on media theory, media archaeology and visual communication.

John-Dylan Haynes (UK/DE) is a psychologist, neuroscientist and Professor of Theory and Analysis of Large-Scale Brain Signals at the Bernstein Center of Charité Berlin. Haynes and his team conduct research on the neuronal basis of consciousness, volition, intentions and free will. They have used MRI technology to show that decision-making is initiated by subconscious brain processes.

Barbara Hohn (AT/CH) is a biochemist at the Friedrich Miescher Institute in Basel. Her fields of research include genetic expression and recombination as well as environmental influences on the stability of plant genomes.

Hiroshi Ishiguro (JP) has been a Professor in the Department of Systems Innovation at the Osaka University since 2009 and Group Leader of the Hiroshi Ishiguro Laboratory at the Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute. His research interests include sensor networks, interactive robotics and android science.

Charlotte Jarvis (UK) is currently artist in residence at The Netherlands Proteomics Centre. Last year they collaborated on the project Blighted by Kenning in which the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was encoded into DNA. This year Charlotte and the NPC are working on Ergo Sum, in which Charlotte will be creating a second self using body parts grown from her stem cells.

Dharmendra Modha (US) has done pioneering work in the field of artificial intelligence and memory simulation. He set up the Cognitive Computing division at IBM’s Almaden Research Center and heads the DARPA SyNAPSE project. He and his team are working on a computer system that emulates the essential functions and structures of biological brains.

Rodrigo Quian Quiroga (AR) Rodrigo Quian Quiroga is the director of the Centre for Systems Neuroscience and the head of the Bioengineering Research Group at the University of Leicester. His main research interest is on the study of the principles of visual perception and memory. He discovered what has been named “Concept cells” or “Jennifer Aniston neurons”—neurons in the human brain that play a key role in memory formation.

Helga Rohra (DE) is an interpreter and author. She has come out as someone suffering from dementia and is an activist on behalf of her fellow sufferers.

Claudia Schmölders (DE) is an interpreter and author. She has come out as someone suffering from dementia and is an activist on behalf of her fellow sufferers.

Arno Villringer (DE) is a neuroscientist at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig. Among his fields of research are neurophysiological processes in the brain activity of human beings as well as regeneration processes in the brain—for example, after a stroke.

With dramatized scenes, excerpts from his impressive musical oeuvre, and the voice of Harald Serafin, the voestalpine Klangwolke will bring Anton Bruckner to life in 2013.

Parov Stelar will musically update the great composer, and Ars Electronica Solutions is contributing a smartphone app to enable audience members to browse through Bruckner’s diary during the weeks leading up to the spectacle. Users can find out about the facts & circumstances of the composer’s life as he went about his creative work. The application cites the original diary entries conscientiously recorded by the great man, and places them in their proper historical context. The result is a detailed picture of Bruckner’s world and of the many highs and lows that characterized his life.

The World’s Largest Smartphone Orchestra

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KqP1hUdu_M&w=600&h=320]

The second part of the app gets deployed during the Klangwolke itself. “Alle Menschen werden Bruckner” transforms spectators’ smartphones and tablets into musical instruments, and unites them into the world’s largest smartphone orchestra, which will play the opening notes of Bruckner’s 4th Symphony together with the Bruckner Orchester Linz. And all of it via live stream on the internet. Who knows—maybe Anton Bruckner will even be listening in?

App for iPhone and iPad
App for Android

Sat 7.9. 20:00
Donaupark

Orchestral music and digital sounds, on one hand; live electronics and visualizations on the other—since 2002, these have limned the program of the Ars Electronica Festival’s Big Concert Night produced jointly with the Brucknerhaus and the Bruckner Orchester.
The overture is Acoustic Time Travel by Prix Ars Electronica Collide@CERN prizewinner Bill Fontana (US), followed by Radiologic by the duo of Carl Stone (US) and Gil Kuno (JP).
Next up is a short film, Welcome Transients by Ernie Kovacs (US). Then, the Bruckner Orchester Linz conducted by Dennis Russell Davies (US/AT) will perform the 10th Symphony by Philip Glass (US). The program continues with Requies by Luciano Berio (IT) and a performance by vibraphone soloist David Friedman (US) of By the Reflecting Pool by Leah Muir (US).

Intermezzo in the Exhibition

The TOTAL RECALL exhibition will then be the setting of performances by Yuri Suzuki (JP), Keith Lam (HK) and Michelle Ngai (TW). They will personally present their works on display there and musically accompany the installations The Sound of the Earth and Device Playing: Cassette Recorder (II).
A special part features the work of Roberto Paci Dalo (IT): the Austria premiere of his audiovisual production Ye Shanghai about the Jewish ghetto in Shanghai during and after World War II.
The electronic finale stars re-lay (Tobias Ehrhardt, AT) & 19 hertz (Emanuel Jauk, AT) with cut.repeat as well as Daito Manabe and Satoru Higa (JP).
The accompanying visualizations are by Arístides García (ES) and Andreas Koller (AT/UK).
Music performed during the breaks between acts is by MFRedman Collective.

Lentos, Freiraum

19:00 Bill Fontana (US) – Acoustic Time Travel
Created under the auspices of the Prix Ars Electronica Collide@CERN Artist in Residence Program

Lentos, Auditorium

19:30 Carl Stone & Gil Kuno – Radiologic

Brucknerhaus, Großer Saal

20:00 Ernie Kovacs: Welcome Transients (Film)
20:10 Bruckner Orchester Linz (AT), Dennis Russell Davies (Dirigent US/AT): Philip Glass: 10. Sinfonie
20:50 Roberto Paci Dalo (IT): Ye Shanghai

Brucknerhaus, Foyer
21:20 TOTAL RECALL: Performance Intermezzo

Yuri Suzuki (JP): The Sound of the Earth

Keith Lam (HK) & Michelle Ngai (TW): Device Playing: Cassette Recorder (II)

Brucknerhaus, Großer Saal
22:00 Bruckner Orchester Linz (AT), Dennis Russell Davies (Dirigent US/AT): Luciano Berio: Requies
22:30 Bruckner Orchester Linz (AT), Dennis Russell Davies (Dirigent US/AT), David Friedman (US) (am Vibraphon): Leah Muir: By the Reflecting Pool
23:10 re-lay (Tobias Ehrhardt) & 19 hertz (Emanuel Jauk) (AT) mit cut.repeat
23:30 Daito Manabe (JP) & Satoru Higa (JP)

The visualizations of the orchestral pieces are by:
Berlin – Arístides García (ES) and Alexander Koller (AT/UK)

Music animations during transitional phases by:
MFRedman Collective

Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz, Freiraum, Auditorium
Brucknerhaus, Großer Saal, Foyer

Das Konzentrationslager Mauthausen (20 Kilometer östlich von Linz) war das größte deutsche Konzentrationslager in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus in Österreich. Es existierte vom 8. August 1938 bis zu seiner Befreiung durch US-amerikanische Truppen am 5. Mai 1945. Das Ars Electronica Festival bietet eine Exkursion zu dieser Gedenkstätte ganz in der Nähe.

Sat 7. 9. 14:30 – 17:00

Language: English
Meeting Place: Brucknerhaus, Infodesk
Fee: € 15; for holders of a Festival Pass € 10

Nahe Linz in Alkoven diente das Renaissance-Schloss Hartheim von 1940 bis 1944 als NS-Euthanasieanstalt. Hier wurden an die 30.000 körperlich und geistig beeinträchtigte oder psychisch kranke Menschen sowie KZ-Häftlinge und ZwangsarbeiterInnen von den Nazis gezielt ermordet. Heute ist Hartheim ein Lern- und Gedenkort. Dorthin führt im Rahmen der TOTAL RECALL Exhibition die Memory Tour Hartheim mit Führungen durch diese Stätte des Erinnerns.

Fri 6. 9. 17:00 – 19:30
Sun 8. 9., 17:00 – 19:30

Language: English
Meeting Place: Brucknerhaus, Infodesk
Fee: € 15; for holders of a Festival Pass € 10

Erleben Sie das Ars Electronica Festival 2013 in dialogischen Führungen. Sie beginnen in der großen Themenausstellung TOTAL RECALL, die Ihnen verschiedene Facetten des Erinnerns nahebringt: das individuelle Gedächtnis mit persönlichen Erinnerungen, den Umgang mit dem kollektiven Kulturerbe und die technische Ebene des Speicherns und Archivierens von Informationen. Nach der Präsentation des Japan Media Arts Festival, dem Besuch des Mobilen Ö1 Atelier und der Campus Ausstellung IL(L) Machine mit junger Medienkunst aus Israel zeigt Ihnen die Ausstellung Projekt Genesis / Your synthetically, wie KünstlerInnen die Methoden der zeitgenössischen Biologie nützen, um sich in neuer Form mit dem Leben auseinanderzusetzen.

Thu 5. 9. 15:30 – 18:00
Fri 6. 9. 15:30 – 18:00
Sat 7. 9. 10:00 – 12:30, 15:30 – 18:00
Sun, 8. 9., 10:00 – 12:30, 15:30 – 18:00
Mon 9. 9. 15:30 – 18:00

Meeting Place: Brucknerhaus, Infodesk
Fee: € 15; for holders of a Festival Pass € 10

für Kinder von 6 bis 12 Jahren

Wie erinnern wir Menschen uns eigentlich? Welche Techniken und Werkzeuge von der Steintafel bis zur Festplatte haben unsere Vorfahren für das Aufbewahren von Informationen entwickelt? Und woran arbeiten WissenschaftlerInnen und ErfinderInnen gerade, damit wir in Zukunft alles speichern können? Viele interessante Antworten auf Fragen wie diese findest du bei der Festivalrallye.

Thu 5. 9. 15:30 – 18:00
Fri 6. 9. 15:30 – 18:00
Sat 7. 9. 10:00 – 12:30, 15:30 – 18:00
Sun 8. 9. 10:00 – 12:30, 15:30 – 18:00
Mon 9. 9. 15:30 – 18:00

Meeting Place: Brucknerhaus, Infodesk
Fee: € 8; free for holders of a Festival Pass
Please note that this program has been designed especially to reach the young people of Linz. Accordingly, only the German language will be used. Thanks for your understanding.