(In)Sights interlinks real objects and digital information in a way that’s fun to use. It enhances the use of the object by adding an interactive level. Coded postcards enable installation visitors to access multimedia content that appears as texts, images or films on adjacent screens.

Leading an environmentally friendly lifestyle can be so simple. If you’re going to leave a room for more than three minutes in the evening, it pays to turn off the light. Or: regularly checking your tire pressure increases driving safety and saves gas. These are only two of the 40 solutions in the areas of mobility, energy, everyday habits and retail consumption that are easy to put into practice immediately, 40 suggestions that you can playfully explore on a Touch Table. Users can also ascertain their own CO₂ footprint. The original version of this installation is part of an exhibition entitled L’Oracle du Papillon in Fribourg, Switzerland.

This exhibit developed in cooperation with the MED-EL company stages a virtual journey through the human ear. Installation visitors produce a sound that they can then follow in a virtual 3-D depiction as it makes its way from the ear to the brain. The original version of this exhibit is on display at the Audioversum in Innsbruck, Austria.

Laser Game, an installation designed for an upcoming exhibition in Berlin, sets up a scenario à la “Mission: Impossible” for users to test their agility. Have you got what it takes to go all the way without getting zapped by a laser beam?

In cooperation with Umdasch Shopfitting, Europe’s leading shop design firm, fashion retailer RAG and electronics giant Samsung, Ars Electronica Solutions developed this interactive Shopping Wall that lets customers browse a product portfolio in a variety of ways. They can interact with the Wall via RFID codes on physical objects, and an entire line of merchandise can be examined close-up via an intuitive interface.

The Festival version of this product presents a broad spectrum of content—for instance, a “best of Ars Electronica Solutions” – and there are various versions to illustrate the product’s scalability and modularity.

Light Is Time Folds Are Space are a new body of works by Matthew Gardiner that examine the relationships between light, folds and space. The works are code generated folded sculptures, fold mapped DNA-like structures, morphed with the systematic movement of light. They reveal relationships between folding and nature, through their repeated structures with subtle code defined variances. Light passes over the greyscale machine-formed mountains and valleys making shadows grow and shift in form, piercing highlights through the monotonal landscape.

It all began with a very fruitful mistake: Japanese artist/musician Ei Wada mistakenly connected a sound cable to a video port and thereby transformed sound into an image. Wada proceeded to take advantage of the fortuitous happenstance by recording the image with a camera and playing it back as an audio signal. This is now the technique used by Wada’s Braun Tube Jazz Band, an ensemble made up of old Braun cathode ray tube TV sets that the maestro has connected to video recorders that are, in turn, hooked up to a PC. He strikes up his Jazz Band by slapping the screens of the various TV sets. The astounding result is a powerful archaic-electronic sound reminiscent of a theremin.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efj23JrHoQ8]

Performances

Akademisches Gymnasium, New Building, I-Center (when it rains: Future Innovators Summit Class Room)
SAT September 6, 2014, noon, 2 PM, 4 PM
SUN September 7, 2014, 10 AM, noon

Draw! The iPhone Quick-Draw System that the Japan Media Arts Festival is presenting in the Future Innovators Exhibit will add a whiff of the Wild West to the high-gloss world of modern media. Inspired by the ingenious pistol delivery contraption used by Robert De Niro’s unforgettable character in Taxi Driver, Mori’s system is a holster that instantaneously slides an iPhone out of your sleeve and into your hand. This is a spectacular gesture that’s made a big splash, thanks to the object itself as well as the accompanying video.

BlindMaps is an R&D project that aims to come up with navigation aids to make it easier and safer for blind people to get around in cities they’re unfamiliar with. The approach: not a system providing verbal output, but rather one that uses a Braille-script-type touchscreen supported by popular online maps and the capabilities of a smartphone.

Schmeiduch, Spitz and van der Vleuten are this year’s recipients of [the next idea] voestalpine Art and Technology Grant to enable them to further develop this promising approach during a three-month residency at the Ars Electronica Futurelab.

The transformation that the city as human habitat is now undergoing is the subject matter of The Participatory City, a focal-point theme of the Connecting Cities project. It commissioned works of art in the public sphere that are designed to open up new ways for city dwellers to interact with their metropolis and to create a critical consciousness of ongoing urban processes of change.

Exemplary

The 2014 Ars Electronica Festival is featuring Entangled Sparks and the Smart Citizen Sentiment Dashboard, two outstanding projects that make estimable contributions to what Connecting Cities is attempting to accomplish. An ancillary event gives the curators and artists involved an opportunity to elaborate on their agenda and the individual works.

Lineup of Speakers

Veronika Pauser (AT): Begrüßung und Einführung/Welcome and Introduction
Nina Valkanova (BG): Smart Citizen Sentiment Dashboard
Peter Holzkorn (AU): Entangled Sparks
Matthew Gardiner (AU/AT): Light is Time Folds are Space
Plenary Session and Q&A

Special thanks to RTV tec, Marcus Diess Wavesound, Radio FRO – Peter “Schnuffi” Müller.