The culmination of the under [my] control market day at Arkade is an oversized round-table at which 20 experts in various disciplines will gather for an alfresco public discussion. Their topic: whether there are technologies that can protect us from excessive media consumption, or whether other strategies are needed to deal with changed media usage patterns.

Sober Assessment

In going about this, there’s place neither for panicky scaremongering nor glorification of high-tech possibilities. What this calls for are dispassionate scrutiny and an objective appraisal of whether a danger even exists. If that’s indeed the case, then this panel will deliver practical solutions for use in everyday life—for instance, an app that enables families to see how much time a youngster is actually spending online as a step towards establishing mutually agreed-upon limits.

Panelists: Jörg Hofstätter (Ovos / AT), Clemens Kaltenberger (Red Cross / AT), Dominik Koller (u19 / AT), Dominik Landwehr (cultural event producer – pop and new media / CH), Markus Luger (Otelo / AT), Gerhard Nussbaum (Kompetenznetzwerk KI-I/ AT), Michael Seemann (author / DE), Daniel Seitz (mediale pfade / DE), David Witzeneder (Neront / AT), et al.

MON September 8 2014, 3 PM: Kino5 – Open Film Lab
Ars Electronica Center, Deep Space

The grand finale of this year’s u19 – CREATE YOUR WORLD will be a review of all the cool stuff that went on over the past four days on Spittelwiese and a presentation of what was developed at Youtube:Lab and Film:Lab, by and with Kino5 and under the motto of Animate Your City.

u19 – CREATE YOUR WORLD Festival

Divided up into five groups, young people take a close-up look at social reality. What’s the deeper meaning of the terms trust, humanity, social innovation and resilience? These concepts occupied the attention of Red Cross founder Henri Dunant, and are still deserving of consideration today.

A Mental Experiment

Students at Leonding Secondary Technical School and four Red Cross youth groups, each accompanied by a professional coach, have spent several weeks confronting these ideas in the form of a mental experiment. High on their agenda is limning the boundary between personal and social spheres.

Many Questions

What does humaneness mean for the individual and for the group? How are people and the environment affected by the capacity to emerge from crises stronger than ever? What innovations are available to society to effectively combat poverty in Austria?

Confrontation in the City

As co-producers of u19 – CREATE YOUR WORLD, the participants will be going public with their results, with their still-unanswered questions as well as new ones that have been raised. At this point, the point is to establish the location of festivalgoers’ boundaries. They’ll be invited to take a position—or maybe they won’t be asked for permission at all and simply be confronted.

Impetus for Government Policymaking

A confrontation in the best sense of the word is the desired outcome of a final discussion among invited experts on Monday. Academia Superior, a co-producer with excellent political contacts, will take the initiative here—addressing the young participants’ suggestions and launching a serious process of rethinking social and sociopolitical patterns of behavior in desperate need of change.

Why do you make films? The Academy of Austrian Film will pose a presumably simple question at the forum staged in conjunction with u19 – CREATE YOUR WORLD this year. The tantalizing nature of the query is further heightened by the composition of the panel whose members will be responding from their very diverse perspectives.

Personal Motives

Providing insights into their own highly personal motives will be a young newcomer—2014 u19 Golden Nica winner Sarah Oos (AT) and an established veteran—Florian Pochlatko (AT), whose Erdbeerland has been honored with the 2014 Austrian Film Prize. Completing the lineup of panelists with something to say about the fascination of filmmaking are prizewinning producer and Academy co-founder Danny Krausz (AT),  Philipp Kaindl (AT) co-founder of kino5, Sirikit Amann (AT), jurymember of the u19 category and curator of the Young Animations program for the Ars Electronica Animation Festival, and Martin Honzik, Head of Festival Ars Electronica (AT).

Film is the theme of the 2014 u19 – CREATE YOUR WORLD Future Festival of the Next Generation. And that’s a happy happenstance, since this year’s Golden Nica winner in the Prix Ars Electronica’s u19 – CREATE YOUR WORLD category, Sarah Oos, is being honored for “Femme Chanel – Emma Fenchel”, a film montage that makes use of found footage.

15 Great Works

You can take in a screening of Sarah Oos’ outstanding film and check out 14 other works by some very talented young people in this year’s u19 – CREATE YOUR WORLD Exhibit, a showcase of fascinating, surprising, offbeat and witty submissions to the Prix Ars Electronica’s u19 category.

Melodious Mirror

(e)motion-mirror by Richard Sadek features an unforeseen mirror that translates facial expressions into sounds. Jonas Bodingbauer’s Smart Clock doubles as a clock and appointment calendar. Plus, there are funny animated films with surprising endings, exciting adventure games, practical robots that can plan interior layouts, and lots more.

Up, up and away!

The youngest prizewinner takes visitors on a trip in her Balloon Hotel. Another project deals with how to make life easier for asylum seekers in Austria. And one project was actually implemented in conjunction with a development aid project in Africa.

We say: If you’re gonna stage an awards ceremony, then do it right! The 2014 winners in the Prix Ars Electronica’s category for young people won’t be receiving only trophies and certificates. For the first time this year, they’ll also be immortalized on a Walk of Fame.

On the Walk of Fame

Excellent work is being singled out for recognition with a Golden Nica, two Awards of Distinction, Merchandise Prizes in the u10 and u14 age groups, and Honorary Mentions. The grand prize goes to Sarah Oos (AT) for Femme Chanel – Emma Fenchel. The runners-up are Richard Sadek (AT) for (e)motion-mirror and Jonas Bodingbauer (AT) for Smart Clock.

If you happen to see a torrent of merry folks from diverse ethnic and social backgrounds dancing their way through downtown Linz while lip-syncing a blaring playback of ABBA’s hit song Take A Chance on Me, then you might think that Mardi Gras is awfully late this year or mass lunacy has broken out. But never mind, what’s underway is merely a collective emotional experiment.

Not Just One Camera, Lots of Them

The point of the Ars Electronica Festival’s experiment is a large-scale Lip-Dub, though one that intentionally deviates from the classic version featuring an uncut tracking shot. Participants in this creative exercise are called upon to film themselves with their own smartphone or an action cam they’ve brought along. This is a great opportunity to vent spontaneously, since happenings that materialize out of a clear blue sky are expressly welcome.

1 Video from 1,000 Perspectives

With the festivities still in progress, the video editing terminals in the Ars Electronica Center will already be in high gear turning countless selfies from this inner city tour into the first version of a music video shot jointly from hundreds of camera angles. Multiple subsequent versions will follow, all entertainingly illustrating how differently one and the same event can be depicted via multiple shifts of perspective.

Take part!