Future Innovators Summit – Talks, Workshops, Events

The working day begins with a Future Innovators Breakfast, followed by a joint kick-off in the Future Innovators Classes and, later, intensive Working Sessions. At the Lunchbox the innovators will have a session with their mentors. The Future Innovators Tea Time in the late afternoon is an opportunity for the innovators and festivalgoers to gather for a presentation of the results of the individual groups and for some in-depths talks about them. Rendezvous Parties in the evening conclude each day. The Future Innovators Exhibit featuring works and projects by the Future Innnovators, as well as various workshops, presentations and round-tables round out the Summit program.

THU September 4, 2014

The Future Innovators Summit begins on Thursday with the first communal breakfast in Arkadenhof. The members of Working Groups A and B will present their projects and ideas, and then attend their first workshop at which they’ll address the festival theme and consider the framework conditions necessary for change.

Lunchbox with Robert Madelin

There’s a group lunch at 1 PM. In addition to a healthy portion of calories and vitamins, the menu includes Mentor Sessions—experienced professionals meet young innovators, answer questions, give suggestions and feedback as well as insights into their own work. On Thursday, Robert Madelin (UK/BE), director general of DG Connect of the European Commission will take a seat at the table to report on the Commission’s programs and strategies. Concluding the day’s discursive program is a 5 PM Tea Time in Domcafé, where the Future Innovators will gather for a joint kick off and an overview of the Future Innovators Summit provided by Hakuhodo and ITU.

FRI September 5, 2014

K. Bradley Paxton (US) will deliver the opening speech on Day 2 of the Future Innovators Summit. As a pioneer of technical developments at Kodak, he’ll give a first-hand account of paths to innovation and what can go wrong along the way. At the subsequent Innovators Breakfast, Innovators from Working Groups C and D will present their projects and ideas. This will be followed by feedback from Paxton and Hiroshi Ishii (JP/US), head of the legendary Tangible Media Group at MIT Media Lab.
Parallel to this event, the Creative Intelligence Workshop will address the question of how to train and support the human spirit, the most important innovation tool of all.

Art and ICT for Lunch

Lunch will be served at the ICT&ART Roundtable. Robert Madelin (UK/BE), Francesca Bria (IT), Lucía García (ES), Luis Miguel Girão (PT), Hiroshi Ishii (JP), Golan Levin (US) and Joachim Sauter (DE) will analyze the links between art and technology—a topic of current strategic significance underscored by an EU action program dedicated to it.
In the Gala Room of the Akademisches Gymnasium, the Ars Electronica Residency Network is holding an AERN Panel, and the I-Center is the site of a presentation by Arthur I. Miller of his latest book entitled Colliding Worlds. The UK-based OHMI Trust will give a progress report on its exemplary OHMI project to develop musical instruments for people with handicaps.

Finish in the Bank

The site of the afternoon session of the Future Innovators Summit is the lobby of the Sparkasse savings bank, where the discussion will focus on economic change. The first speaker is Sanjit Bunker Roy (IN), the founder of Barefoot College that teaches women in rural India to generate electricity and light with solar energy and to build DIY lamps, kettles, parabolic reflectors and solar elements. He’ll be followed by Zoubida Charrouf, a chemist on the faculty of Mohammed V University in Morocco, who’ll report on a similar initiative to help women cultivate medicinal plants and to produce argan oil as a way to improve their own lives and nurture biodiversity in their region. Finally, the innovators in Groups A and B will present the results of their Working Sessions to Bunker Roy, Zoubida Charrouf and the audience.

SAT September 6, 2014

At the Saturday breakfast, Working Groups E and F will present their current projects to the assembled Future Innovators Summit participants and festivalgoers. In addition to the sessions, there are some other notable events scheduled: Shota Mori presents his prizewinning iPhone Quick-Draw System; young festivalgoers are invited to attend the BIO KiiCS Open Training workshop, ICT ART CONNECT.study preview & discussion; and Milan-based Diotima Society will stage its C-School, a new approach to education that stresses essential skills and cultural techniques.

Pros and Pioneers

The Saturday Lunchbox will be a very special Mentor Session. The illustrious guests include Joachim Sauter (DE) of Art+Com, Golan Levin (US) of Carnegie Mellon University and Hiroshi Ishii (JP/US), who’ll make their experience available to benefit young Summit participants.
The final installment on the lecture program will be one of the absolute highlights of the entire festival: Derrick de Kerckhove (CA) moderating the Prix Forum for the first prizewinner in the new Visionary Pioneers of Media Art category: Roy Ascott (UK). In the keynote address, Ed Shanken, prominent media art historian and author of a book about the artist, will provide an overview of Ascott’s remarkable oeuvre. Then, the visionary pioneer himself will turn his attention to the future. Finally, Innovators in Groups C and D will present the results of their work to Roy Ascott and the audience.

SUN September 7, 2014

Any kind of change begins in people’s heads. Here’s where it has to emerge and develop. We need narratives to get this going and to accompany us as it proceeds. Narratives that update or replace old clichés and outworn patterns of thinking. Ones that anchor our identity not only in the past but in the future, in that which we want to accomplish.

Storytelling for a Change

Panashe Chigumadzi is a young author and visionary from Zimbabwe. She’s convinced that new stories and ways of telling them are precisely what are needed in order to overcome still-prevailing colonialist clichés and perspectives and to go beyond them to construct a new African identity. She’ll give an account of her work, experiences and successes in the Sunday lecture in the idyllic courtyard of the Bischofsitz. Next up is Derrick de Kerkove, long-time director of the Marshall McLuhan Center, author of many books and professor at the University of Toronto.
The program on the last day of the Future Innovators Summit also includes the final presentation of Groups E and F; the Handcrafted Futures Workshop with Afroditi Psarra (GR); an Artist Talk with Shota Mori (JP), Skeletonics (JP) and Kazutoshi Iida (JP), and the Connecting Cities panel.

Full detail schedule on ars.electronica.art/c/schedule/

You will find all information about the Future Innovators Summit that will take place from September 4th to 7th, 2014, in Linz on ars.electronica.art/c/future-innovators-summit!