Ars Electronica’s featured artist is HR Giger. The painter, graphic artist and designer was born in 1940 in Switzerland. He’s an art world outsider and the legendary creator of biomechanics and the Oscar-winning creature in “Alien.” This embodiment of fear and horror, the intruder from beyond in Ridley Scott’s classic sci-fi film, has been a pop culture icon since 1980 and made Giger’s inimitable style world famous.

Giger is part of the 1960s avant-garde but his roots extend back into the art history of the 19th century. He is indeed a painter, but has made the airbrush his primary tool.

Fears and Obsessions

As one of the leading innovators in the fantastic art genre, Giger’s art draws upon his childhood fears and obsessions, above all humankind’s collective fears of global atomic warfare and of being victimized by technological progress. Obsessed by the cycle of birth, eros and death, the artist merges technology, mechanics and organic creatures into frightening “bio-mechanoids” and thus visions that anticipated cyborgs.

From Necronom to Prometheus

The exhibition in Linz’s Lentos Art Museum features paintings, drawings, films and sculptures that reveal the development of Giger’s biomechanical style. Accompanied by original props, design sketches and the Alien Diaries, the exhibition traces his career from the Necronom cycle from the 1970s to Alien and all the way to Prometheus, Giger’s latest design—once again for a film by Ridley Scott.

Alien Diaries

Zu den Raritäten der Ausstellung zählen Gigers legendäre Alien-Diaries aus den Jahren 1978 und 1979. Erstmals liegen sie nun als Buch vor, das mit der Ausstellungsvernissage im LENTOS Kunstmuseum Linz in den Handel kommt und auch bei einer Signierstunde mit dem Künstler erhältlich ist.

Ars Electronica’s featured artist is HR Giger. The painter, graphic artist and designer was born in 1940 in Switzerland. He’s an art world outsider and the legendary creator of biomechanics and the Oscar-winning creature in “Alien.” This embodiment of fear and horror, the intruder from beyond in Ridley Scott’s classic sci-fi film, has been a pop culture icon since 1980 and made Giger’s inimitable style world famous.

Giger is part of the 1960s avant-garde but his roots extend back into the art history of the 19th century. He is indeed a painter, but has made the airbrush his primary tool.

Fears and Obsessions

As one of the leading innovators in the fantastic art genre, Giger’s art draws upon his childhood fears and obsessions, above all humankind’s collective fears of global atomic warfare and of being victimized by technological progress. Obsessed by the cycle of birth, eros and death, the artist merges technology, mechanics and organic creatures into frightening “bio-mechanoids” and thus visions that anticipated cyborgs.

From Necronom to Prometheus

The exhibition in Linz’s Lentos Art Museum features paintings, drawings, films and sculptures that reveal the development of Giger’s biomechanical style. Accompanied by original props, design sketches and the Alien Diaries, the exhibition traces his career from the Necronom cycle from the 1970s to Alien and all the way to Prometheus, Giger’s latest design—once again for a film by Ridley Scott.

Alien Diaries

Zu den Raritäten der Ausstellung zählen Gigers legendäre Alien-Diaries aus den Jahren 1978 und 1979. Erstmals liegen sie nun als Buch vor, das mit der Ausstellungsvernissage im LENTOS Kunstmuseum Linz in den Handel kommt und auch bei einer Signierstunde mit dem Künstler erhältlich ist.

Book signing with HR Giger

Thu 5. 9. 15:00
LENTOS Kunstmuseum Linz

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

This propensity for Computer Animation to expand and merge with other fields is unmistakable. On the one hand, there is an apparent danger for this field to develop into an interdisciplinary fringe domain. On the other, the very fact that it has continually expanded offers substantial potential for a new orientation. Is the field of Computer Animation experiencing an existential crisis? Or is the context of an unlimited field actually an essential core element?

Digital Animation has become a pervasive element in our daily lives, at times visibly recognizable as a simulation and at others almost indistinguishable from real-world content. Moving images created with computer technology constitute a very diverse spectrum, particularly in hybrid forms, and are products of a highly interdisciplinary collaboration of individuals from the worlds of industry, research, art and science. In this unlimited domain, animation is ubiquitous and yet, simultaneously, undifferentiated. To even attempt to define what Digital Animation is, it becomes necessary to more closely examine this dynamic and constantly expanding field.

A symposium entitled “Expanded Digital Animation: Mapping an Unlimited Landscape” will be held as part of the Ars Electronica 2013 on 5th September. A collaboration between the Hagenberg Campus of the University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria, the Ars Electronica Festival and LENTOS Kunstmuseum, it aims to address the transgression of borders, hybrid forms and fringe areas within the field of Computer Animation.

The conference is aimed at artists, producers, researchers, students and all those commuters who want to travel in unknown terrains of animation.

The conference creates particular through the varied program of Ars Electronica an exciting context and the basis for an insightful reflection of possible approaches.

Indroduction & Welcome

09:40 – 10:00 Jürgen Hagler & Alexander Wilhelm / Expanded Digital Animation

Exploration 1 // Mapping the Landscape: Theory and Art

10:00 – 10:40 Suzanne Buchan / Pervasive Animation
10:40 – 11:20 Virgil Widrich / in/out – digital/analog Bilder zwischen digitalem Realismus und analoger Glaubwürdigkeit
11:20 – 11:40 Short Coffee Break
11:40 – 12:30 John Gerrard / John Gerrard / Exercise
12:30 – 14:00 Lunch Break

Exploration 2 // Collapsing Boundaries: Performance, Interaction and Data Narration

14:00 – 14:30 Karin Wehn / Conquering New Ground: Animation on the Move
14:30 – 15:00 Friedrich Kirschner / Computer Animation in a Performance Context
15:00 – 15:30 Joreg / Completing Reality – About Rmperceptible Realtime Computer Graphics
15:30 – 16:00 Benjamin Wiederkehr / Thoughts on Animation in Information Visualization
16:00 – 16:30 Coffee Break

Exploration 3 // Unlimited Fields: Transformation and Interpretation

16:30 – 17:25 Semiconductor / A-Z of Noise
17:25 – 18:20 Quayola / Memo Akten / Hybrid Spaces of Animated Painting and Sculpture

http://www.expandedanimation.com/

Der genaue Zeitplan der Konferenz wird demnächst online gestellt.

Thu 5. 9. 09:40 – 18:20
LENTOS Kunstmuseum Linz