![OPENING](files/2014/08/highlight12.jpg)
OPENING: The featured event on the first day of the festival is the Opening Parcours. This large-scale venue crawl through the entire festival layout in downtown Linz culminates at St. Mary’s Cathedral (Mariendom) where the festival opening kicks off at 8:30 PM and church’s façade becomes a jumbo-format projection surface.
![FUTURE INNOVATORS SUMMIT](files/2014/08/highlight22.jpg)
FUTURE INNOVATORS SUMMIT: The summit launched jointly by Ars Electronica, Hakuhodo and ITU Telecom is a conclave of extraordinary individuals from all over the world, experts in four fields that seldom convene at such a get-together—art & design, engineering, start-ups and social activism. The lineup includes a unique mix of lectures and keynotes, discussions and workshops, all of which are open to festivalgoers.
![CYBERARTS 2014](files/2014/08/highlight31.jpg)
CYBERARTS 2014: Despite all the changes, the CyberArts exhibition remains the Festival’s most important showcase of excellence in media art. It brings together a collection of the best works singled out for recognition by the 2014 Prix Ars Electronica juries. For the first time, CyberArts is also spotlighting the brilliant oeuvre one of the Visionary Pioneers of Media Art: Roy Ascott.
![ARTS2](files/2014/08/highlight41.jpg)
ARTS2: The Campus exhibition has become a fixture at Ars Electronica. It’s staged by Linz Art University’s Interface Cultures program, and also features a foreign guest institution. This year, it’s ARTS² – École supérieure des Arts in Mons, Belgium, the 2015 European Capital of Culture.
![INTERFACE CULTURES](files/2014/08/highlight51.jpg)
INTERFACE CULTURES: The show marking the 10th anniversary of Linz Art University’s Interface Cultures program is the largest exhibition in the history of Campus. The lineup of accompanying events includes Network Talks by professors at partner universities in Europe, Asia South America and Australia, and an alumni reunion.
![DEVICE ART](files/2014/08/highlight61.jpg)
DEVICE ART: It is a relatively young art form, its practitioners pursue the aim of using innovative materials and techniques to create high-tech contrivances featuring sophisticated, whimsical design. Art, design, technology, science and entertainment blend in a unique way, and simultaneously dovetail modernity and ancient Japanese traditions.
![BUDDHA ON THE BEACH](files/2014/08/highlight71.jpg)
BUDDHA ON THE BEACH: In the face of the many current crises, we flee—sometimes just in our minds, sometimes literally, physically—and increasingly often to idyllic tropical paradises far, far away. Assume that Buddha appeared today on one of these beaches. Would he have a solution to our problems? The “Buddha on the Beach” exhibition demonstrates the interrelationship between (Taiwanese) art and (global) crises.
![THE BIG CONCERT NIGHT](files/2014/08/highlight81.jpg)
THE BIG CONCERT NIGHT: Among numerous superb works of acoustic and visual artistry, the 2014 Big Concert Night’s lineup also includes three world premieres: Josef Klammer’s visualized solo concert “Trommeln ist ein dehnbarer Begriff” in the LENTOS Museum of Art, Marco Lemke’s “Les Chimères” in the Brucknerhaus, and Michael Nyman’s “Symphony No. 3 – Symphony of sexual songs” performed by the Bruckner Orchester Linz conducted by Dennis Russell Davies.
![THE STORY WEAVER](files/2014/08/highlight91.jpg)
THE STORY WEAVER: The beauty of nature as well as the threat it poses have exerted a great influence on Japanese society and culture since time immemorial. This is made evident by numerous myths and fairy tales, one of which is “The Crane Returns a Favor.” Maki Namekawa, Chiaki Ishikawa and Emiko Ogawa, three Japanese artists who have been living and working in Linz for many years, have created an audiovisual work based on this tale, “The Story Weaver,” and will perform it in Ars Electronica Center’s Deep Space.
![DOM EXHIBIT](files/2014/08/highlight101.jpg)
DOM EXHIBIT: St. Mary’s Cathedral will be serving as an extraordinary exhibition space throughout the festival. The church’s nave, crypt and Rudigiersaal will host the Dom Exhibit, a diverse series of artistic installations.
![U19 - CREATE YOUR WORLD](files/2014/08/highlight111.jpg)
U19 - CREATE YOUR WORLD: With a total of 45 installations, exhibitions, presentations, workshops and open labs, the u19 – CREATE YOUR WORLD festival for young people is once again a colorful playground for ideas, solutions, concepts and experiments.
creativity, catalysts, community, collaboration, communication, content, commons, competition, chaos, culture, cooperation, crossover, cross-disciplinarity, capability, capacity, capital, craving, caution, certainty, confidence, challenge, choice, citizens, clouds, crowds, clusters, code, coexistence, cohesion, coincidence, cynicism, cacophony, commitment, compromises, consideration, coordination, copyright, copyleft, correlation, courtesy, craziness, credibility, criticism, cruelty, cubicles, cookies, caffeine, cognition, china, cumulation, culmination, cyberspace, cyber-arts …
C … what it takes to change
The 2014 Ars Electronica Festival was set for September 4-8.Theme of 2014 was “C … what it takes to change,” an inquiry into the prerequisites and framework conditions necessary to enable social innovation and renewal to emerge and make an impact. The focus was on art as catalyst. The in-depth elaborations, lively discussions and bold provocations featured, as usual, artists, scholars and scientists from all over the world—renowned intellectuals confronted by young contrarians, top experts encountering interested laypersons, the pioneers of the Digital Revolution face to face with the shooting stars of today’s media art scene. From September 4th to 8th, the 2014 Ars Electronica once again was a setting for reciprocal exchange and networking, a one-of-a-kind forum in which perspectives and opinions were negotiated and presented in the form of speeches, artistic installations, performances and interventions. About 85.000 visits were counted. 579 artists, scientists, technologists, musicians and sound artists, entrepreneurs, inventors and much more from 59 different countries were actively involved into 2014 Ars Electronica. They all have shaped and realized 427 individual events – including 114 tours.
Let´s review again the high points of the Festival here:
![](files/2014/03/Festival_Rückblick2.jpg)
Photos
![](files/2014/03/flickrbanner.jpg)
Program
![Future Innovators Summit](files/2014/08/button_fis.jpg)