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.

As the festival moves into the heart of the city, the media façade of Ars Electronica Center extrudes itself to a number of pixels distributed across the festival sites, entangled with their counterparts on the iconic building. They are controlled via the “LinzerSchnitte”, an open-source radio-based physical computing technology developed at the Ars Electronica Futurelab.

Godparenthood for a pixel-pair

During the festival, workshops in the program of the Future Innovators Summit enable visitors to participate by assuming “godparenthood” for a pixel-pair and choosing the patterns it will show. Ars Electronica Futurelab also offers a behind-the-scenes look at the technology itself and advice for anyone interested in using it for their own project.

Anyone who’s ever felt the desire to adopt a pixel can now make their dream come true thanks to Entangled Sparks. Foster parents assume authority over one of the points of light on the Ars Electronica Center’s façade. Meanwhile, the façade’s pixels are being distributed about town in the form of Linzer Schnitt pastries with a tiny radio receiver hidden inside. So, instead of wolfing it down and being done with it, you’ll just have to come up with some creative way to put it to use.

Playing with Light

For instance, via remote control from the privacy of your own home, you could toggle your adopted pixel on and off, or make it shine steadily, blink, or slowly segue from bright to dark. You could even join forces with other pixel-adopters and design a pattern for the AEC’s façade. Accompanying workshops https://ars.electronica.art/Link-zu-den-entangled-sparks-Workshops provide an opportunity to get acquainted with the innards of the Linzer Schnitten and to give some thought to how you could put this technology developed at the Ars Electronica Futurelab to use in your own project.

Connecting Cities is a worldwide expanding network aiming to build up a connected infrastructure of media facades, urban screens and other digital projection sites to circulate artistic and socially relevant content. In opposition to the commercial use of these urban media, we use them as platforms on which citizens can exchange information and artworks – within the city as much as between cities.

This year’s theme is Participatory City, the aim of which is to get city dwellers integrated into the various projects. During the Ars Electronica Festival 2014, Linz serves as one of the Participatory City venues and shows two outstanding interactive façade projects: Entangled Sparks and Smart Citizen Sentiment Dashboard

Connecting Cities Network initiated by Public Art Lab Berlin in co-organization with Ars Electronica Linz, Media Architecture Institute Vienna, FACT Liverpool, BIS Istanbul, Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb, m-cult Helsinki, Medialab-Prado Madrid, iMAL Brussels, Foundation Riga 2014 and Videospread Marseille, in association with Mutek Montreal, Marseille-Provence 2013, Aarhus University, Quartier des spectacles Montreal, Foundation Bauhaus Dessau, Verve Cultural Sao Paulo, ikono Berlin, Federation Square Melbourne; funded by the European Commission – Programme Culture..