Ars Electronica Center – Post City

Opening and Introduction Parcours

Martin Hieslmair — Wed, 26 Aug 2015 16:33:41 +0000

Kicking off the festival is an elaborate Opening and Introduction Parcours with Gerfried Stocker (Ars Electronica) presenting numerous projects and festival venues, and thus a perfect opportunity to get an overview and to meet & greet artists and curators.

Schedule

10:30 AM-11 AM	Start of Parcours – Spaceship Earth	Ars Electronica Center
11 AM-11:30 AM	Opening Elements of Art&Science	Ars Electronica Center
11:30 AM-11:45 AM	Nick Ervinck	Ars Electronica Center
12 Noon-12:30 PM	Deep Space 8K	Ars Electronica Center
1-2 PM	Campus Exhibition: Université Paris 8	University of Art and Design Linz
2-3 PM	Mobile Ö1 Atelier	Hauptplatz
2:30-3 PM	Ars Electronica Animationfestival	CENTRAL
3-4:45 PM	POST CITY Exhibitions Part I (Future Mobility and Habitat 21, Interface Cultures, Knowledge Capital and Post City Kit)	PostCity
5-6 PM	CyberArts 2015	OK Center for Contemporary Art
7-8 PM	POST CITY Exhibitions Part II (Naked Veriti, u19 – CREATE YOUR WORLD, 1001 Modell, Renaming the City, Russian Sound Art Project, Hallstatt Revisited, Form/Code/Maps)	PostCity

Subsequently, the Opening will take place in the PostCity!

Ars Electronica Blog

“A series of openings will highlight Day 1 of the Ars Electronica Festival. Whoever wants to take it all in and benefit from expert commentary along the way should definitely join the Openings & Introductory Parcours led by Ars Electronica Artistic Director Gerfried Stocker.” Read more on the Ars Electronica Blog!

Elements of Art and Science

raphaelgi — Fri, 21 Aug 2015 18:20:45 +0000

Immediately adjacent to CyberArts 2015—both physically and conceptually—is Elements of Art and Science, a presentation of outstanding works whose origins to some extent straddle the worlds of art and science. As diverse as these works are, what they all have in common is financing and support from the Creative Europe programme of the European Commission.

Acoustic Time Travel

Bill Fontana (US)

Bill Fontana (US), 2013 recipient of the Prix Ars Electronica Collide@CERN Residency, created Acoustic Time Travel in conjunction with his residency at CERN. The artist explored that facility on the acoustic level, recorded noises and combined them into a new sound sculpture.

A particular kind of conversation

Semiconductor (Ruth Jarman, Joe Gerhardt/UK)

In their art works the artist duo Semiconductor explores the fundamental material nature of our world and how we experience it through the lens of science and technology, investigating how devices mediate our experiences of nature and position man as an observer of the physical world. They combine methods of filming, animation, sound and dialogue; re-working and combining actual elements of the scientific language of particle physics (verbal, visual, aural, technological…) into new forms.

Architectural SonarWorks

Cedric Brandilly (FR)

The aim of Architectural SonarWorks is to create a musical/audio language based upon cartographic statements and architectural characteristics which belong to a definite space. It also consists in imagining architecture as a partition.

Augmented Hand Series

Golan Levin (US), Kyle McDonald (US), Chris Sugrue (US)

The Augmented Hand Series is a real-time interactive software system that presents playful, dreamlike, and uncanny transformations of its visitors’ hands. Conceived as a tool for muddling embodied cognition, the installation consists of a box into which a visitor inserts their hand, and a display that shows their “reimagined” hand, altered by various dynamic and structural transformations.

Bizzarie die varie figure

Giovanni Battista Braccelli (IT)

Braccelli’s Bizzarie di varie figure from the 17th century contains a suite of 50 etchings that celebrate the human figure in geometric forms. Squares, triangles, circles, and parallelograms take the place of muscle, bone, and tissue, defining the body in a new visual vocabulary – and thus connecting with the works of Universal Everything (UK).

Body Paint

exonemo (JP)

This work uses body painting to examine our physical definitions, our physicality, in a world of networked information devices. Each work in this portrait series features a person, nude, shaved, and painted entirely in a single shade of color, displayed on an LCD that has been entirely painted in the same color except for the human subject on the screen. The boundaries between background and foreground are erased—a human body and an electronic display body are both covered in the same color paint—and the works evoke the themes of ambiguity and confusion, and whether the individual depicted is a human being or a picture of a human being.

D-Dalus: A New Way of Traveling

formquadrat (AT), Meinhard Schwaiger (IAT21 GmbH/AT)

The D-Dalus is the “enfant terrible” of the aircraft industry with outstanding and surprising new flight features. The D-Dalus can do more than just fly … it can also start and land vertically, float, and turn on its axis. When the engines are switched off for a fraction of a second, the D-Dalus can even suction itself onto the landing surface, thus enabling it to land on ships or other planes.

Nick Ervinck (BE): Selected Works

Viunap
Nick Ervinck (BE) uses traditional cottages, which he turns into absurd buildings. The cottages become figures with connotations to crabs and other sea animals that walk along the beach, resembling the impossible structures in the engravings of the mathematician Escher (1898-1972).

Elbeetad
Elbeetad is a 3D print inspired by the voluptuousness of the so-called “Rubens woman”. It brings into question the “skin” of the sculpture.

Agrieborz
For Agrieborz, Nick Ervinck used imagery of human organs that he found in medical manuals as construction materials to create an organic form. Though imaginary, it seems to retain some familiarity due to its visual connection to human organs, muscles, and nerves.

Ayamonsk
Ayamonsk is derived from vegetable structures and coated with a glossy varnish which in turn refers to the virtual genesis of this form.

Nikeyswoda/Garfinoswoda
Nikeyswoda und Garfinoswoda seem made out of two components but are printed as one entity.

Bortoby
Bortoby is clearly animal-like, but is impossible to define well.

Flash Flood

350.org (US)

Working with artists in 16 different communities and thousands of volunteers, 350.org coordinated massive human sculptures that were photographed from satellite. The project began on November 20, 2010 with a human “flash flood” in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Over a thousand local citizens stood in the dry Santa Fe riverbed, designated as one of America’s most endangered rivers. To illustrate their vision for a living river and a sustainable ecosystem, New Mexicans of all ages and faiths carried and flipped blue-painted recycled cardboard and other blue materials composing a visual flash flood in the dry riverbed.

Furnished Fluids

Akira Wakita (JP)

Furnished Fluid is a visualization that utilizes the air flow that we are practically unaware of in our daily lives. This installation, which integrates design miniatures and real-time images, enables us to use the power of science to make visible the appealing and valuable aspects of 20th century industrial design. W. W. Stool (1990) by Philippe Starck, Hill House 1 (1902) by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, and the Big Easy (1991) by Ron Arad were selected in tribute to these great designers.

Kepler’s Dream

Ann-Katrin Krenz (DE), Michael Burk (DE)

Kepler’s Dream is an aesthetical investigation, exploring obsolete projection technologies in combination with computationally created content that is given a physical shape through 3D printing.

Minibuilders

IAAC-Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (ES)

The construction industry is wasteful and inefficient, slow to adopt technologies that are already well established in other fields, such as robotics. Minibuilders is scalable, it supplants one large robot for a number of smaller agile robots, that work together effectively towards a single outcome.

Mirage

Ralf Baecker (DE)

Mirage is a projection apparatus that makes uses of principles from optics and artificial neural network research. Mirage generates a synthesized landscape based on its perception through a fluxgate magnetometer (Förster Sonde).

Encounters

María Ignacia Edwards (CL)

María Ignacia Edwards works with equilibrium, the lightness and weightlessness of objects that she brings into balance by deploying their own weight or counterweights. Based on her experience at the ESO observatories La Silla and ALMA, María created a “Mobile Instrument”, as the artist calls it, which is able to capture the movement of pieces located at distant places by a musical mechanism as a reference to time and the motion of the universe. She is connecting points for tracing a scale constellation, a map, translated in the walkable city space.

planted

Young Sun Kim (KR)

How suitable are media for conveying pure information? Is sound almost completely devoid of its source’s perspective even conceivable? “Planted,” a sound installation that Young Sun Kim created during his residency at the Ars Electronica Futurelab, is an answer to these questions. He used 10 microphones to capture the ambient tonal environment of wildflowers and grasses growing in Linz. Installation visitors experience this entirely via wave field synthesis.

Portrait on the Fly

Christa Sommerer (AT) und Laurent Mignonneau (AT/FR)
Ars Electronica Center

Portrait on the Fly consists of a series of interactive portraits and plotter drawings, inspired by Guiseppe Arcimboldo’s fantastic composite heads from the mid 15th century. For the series Portrait on the Fly Sommerer and Mignonneau modeled virtual insects that can align themselves so as to compose human portraits in real time.

Presence

Universal Everything (UK)
Ars Electronica Center

Presence turns the screen into a stage, the body into an abstracted sculpture. Experimenting with various materials and forms, the life-sized moving sculptures cycle through a randomised collection of “costumes” that range from colorful light trails to crystalline formations, with only the movement revealing the human presence within.

Ryoji Ikeda’s Residency

Ars Electronica Center

Ryoji Ikeda was the 2014 recipient of the Prix Ars Electronica Collide@CERN Residency Award. At the focal point of Ikeda’s efforts were the process itself and developing as an artist. In this video, Tom Melia, Ryoji Ikeda’s Scientific Inspiration Partner at CERN, talks about the synergies of art and science as well as collaboration among artists and scientists.

Seed Bed

Jonathan Keep (UK)
Ars Electronica Center

The Seed Bed relates to the fundamental concept of evolutionary morphologies but also creative growth. Generated in computer code my working method lends itself to altering the code to make related and evolving shapes. Being able to 3D print these unique and individual forms directly from the computer in clay represents the strength of this technology and fulfills my desire to explore the possibilities of ceramic form.

Silk Leaf

Julian Melchiorri (IT/UK)
Ars Electronica Center

Inspired by natural mechanisms and physical phenomena, Julian Melchiorri (IT/UK) conducted laboratory experiments in order to explore the potential for making materials that photosynthesize, and their possible applications. Silk Leaf is the first result of this research. It is a modular device that photosynthesizes, made of a biological material mostly composed of silk protein and chloroplasts.

Supreme Believers

Universal Everything (UK)
Ars Electronica Center

A lone figure struggles to make his way across a sparse, grassy landscape, seemingly battling the elements as they beat him back. His body starts to decompose, surrendering to the invisible physical forces, and he disappears into a cascade of particles.

Suspended Depositions

Brian Harms (US)

Suspended Depositions is a novel rapid prototyping approach that aims to blur the line between
processes of design and fabrication. The project explores the concept of programming everyday materials, a form of “physical programming”, where objects are “made to act” on some form following specific instructions.

The Outline of Paradise

Ursula Damm (DE)
Ars Electronica Center

What would our cities look like if advertising messages were than the techno aesthetic of conventional advertising? The Outline of Paradise explores the promises and capabilities of technoscience and develops videos and installations out of these narratives. It sets the technology towards a natural, sensual aesthetic, which would be natural and sustainable.

Traces

Dana Zelig (IL)

Traces project explores the concept of programming everyday materials, a form of “physical programming” where objects are “made to act” on some form following specific instructions. To explore this idea, Dana Zelig (IS) developed 12 processed-folding objects series, designed with the Processing programming language and various physical techniques.

Transmart Miniascape

Yasuaki Kakehi (JP)
POST CITY, Roof Top

Transmart miniascape is an art installation for displaying volumetric images that blends in with ambient surroundings.

Versuch unter Kreisen

Julius von Bismarck (DE)
Ars Electronica Center

Julius von Bismarck (DE) was the first recipient of a Prix Ars Electronica Collide@CERN Residency Award in 2012. The outcome of his residency was “Versuch unter Kreisen,” a spatial installation made up of several swinging illuminated bodies. The mathematically calculated, cyclical motion of the lamps is inspired by wave patterns that occur in nature in such minute or enormous dimensions that they’re generally not visible to the naked eye.

VIENNA 3000

Academy of Fine Arts Vienna/Institute of Art and Architecture (AT)
POST CITY, Fashion District

A Land of Honey / Anna Krumpholz (AT)

Urban Stimulus / Clemens Aniser (AT), Wolfgang Novotny (AT)

Queer City / Cenk Güzelis (TR)

Welfare State 3000 / Matea Ban (HR)

Time Capsule—a nuclear waste information center / Helvijs Savickis (LV)

Memento / Sasha Konovalov (UA)

Enlightened Being. Vienna as an energetic dynamic reality / Michael Glechner (AT)

Movements / Marlene Lübke-Ahrens (AT)
Dissatisfied with the reality of architecture as well as urban planning, the Architectural Design
Studio at the Institute of Art and Architecture (Academy of Fine Arts Vienna/AT) was driven by the ambition to explore the radical uncertainty of the far future. Students were invited to develop individual trajectories into the unknown and encouraged to develop design projects that embody the potential to question our beliefs and standards of today. Funded entirely by the City of Vienna, the studio placed great emphasis on planning scenarios for the Austrian capital.

Voxel Posse

Universal Everything (UK)
Ars Electronica Center

Utilizing the powers of 3D printing and anthropomorphism, Universal Everything creates a fleet of miniature vector robots. Looking like crystalline rocks that sprouted legs, these creatures are yet another exploration into harnessing the most basic elements of the human form to infuse inanimate objects with the essence of life.

Watching the Watchers

James Bridle (UK)
Ars Electronica Center

Watching the Watchers is a series of drone images from Google Maps and other publically accessible sources of satellite images. These aerial photographs show military bases in the US, Afghanistan, Pakistan and other places from which the military operates drones.

Zeiss VR One

Zeiss (DE)
POST CITY

The Zeiss VR One is an innovative device that allows us to take our novel steps in the world of virtual reality. The VR One is the first and only VR headset that is made with a leading-edge optical design and Zeiss precision optics. With the VR ONE, the smartphone you carry in your pocket can take you to worlds of virtual and augmented reality. Compatible with many smartphones and hundreds of apps made for mobile VR devices, you can simply download and launch the app, lock your smartphone in the VR One precision tray, and slide it in the VR One. Experience VR games, videos, and amazing experiences that were never before possible.

Deep Space 8K

raphaelgi — Fri, 21 Aug 2015 18:10:15 +0000

The history of 3-D projections in the Ars Electronica Center began in 1996 with the legendary CAVE, a 3x3x3-meter box created at the Electronic Visualization Lab in Chicago. The 2009 premiere of Ars Electronica’s Deep Space created a sensation among industry insiders as well as laypeople of all ages. Infrastructure configured by the Ars Electronica Futurelab produced 16×9-meter images on the space’s wall and floor that represented a viewing revolution.

Pushing the Envelope

The crystal-clear depictions of high-definition photos, stereoscopic videos, 3-D visualizations and interactive games featured in Deep Space expanded the boundaries of technical feasibility. Now, in 2015, Deep Space has been taken to the next level.

Total Makeover

Following a major technical upgrade in the summer of 2015 and the installation of eight 4K projectors running at 120 Hz (as compared to the previous equipment’s 30), the imagery screened in what’s been renamed Deep Space 8K is in 8K resolution—each picture consists of 8,192 × 4,320 pixels. The data stream it takes to generate these images—an awesome 23 gigabytes per second—is processed by special high-performance computers in real time.

Lab and Stage

For one thing—and to the delight of audiences in the Ars Electronica Center’s premier attraction—this raises the quality of the visual and spatial experience to a never-before-achieved level. For another, this opens up a whole series of possibilities for developing and experimenting with new visualization concepts. Thus, the upgrade from the “old” Deep Space to Deep Space 8K is an enhancement to which the often-overused term quantum leap can justifiably be applied. Visiting the 2015 Ars Electronica Festival wouldn’t be complete without beholding Deep Space 8K.

With the friendly support of XI-Machines and Ton&Bild

Ars Electronica Blog

“Sharper pictures, brighter colors and starker contrast are in store for visitors to Deep Space 8K following a technical makeover wrapped up in early August.” Read more on the Ars Electronica Blog!

Deep Space 8K Program

Deep Space 8K

Now, in 2015, Deep Space has been taken to the next level.

Deep Space 8K: Best of

The very best of the regular Deep Space 8K–Program.

Deep Space 8K: Making of

As much sophisticated knowhow on the part of Ars Electronica Futurelab engineers went into the conception of Deep Space 8K as high-performance technology went into that concept’s execution.

Deep Space 8K: The Soul of the Cube

The Soul of the Cube (SOTC) is a virtual being, an abstract creature that is visible in between applications, it is both a “host” and the inner self of its complex infrastructure.

Deep Space 8K: Inside Mercedes-Benz Advanced Design

New mobility concepts, trailblazing interfaces, the language of forms and the future of brand identity will be the subjects of talks by Vera Schmidt (DE) and Holger Hutzenlaub (DE).

Deep Space 8K: The International Teletext Art Festival – ITAF 2015

The works singled out for recognition this year that are being presented at the 2015 Ars Electronica Festival explore the aesthetic-artistic latitude the teletext provides.

Deep Space 8K: Cinematic Rendering – in Medical Diagnostics and Virtual Anatomy

On the basis of physical fundamentals, Siemens has developed an innovative rendering algorithm that provides superbly detailed, photorealistic images.

Deep Space 8K: Universum Mensch – Life is Motion: New Trends in Medical Imaging

In this presentation, Matthias Günther (DE) of the Fraunhofer Institute for Medical Image Computing (MEVIS) focuses on the function of the heart.

Deep Space 8K: The Universe Within – In the Virtual Anatomy Theater of the Future

An application developed by the Ars Electronica Futurelab transforms Deep Space 8K into a virtual anatomy theater in which viewers can observe the human body in 3-D.

Deep Space 8K: Cultural Heritage: The Scottish Ten, Rome´s Invisible City in 3D: A BBC Film, CyArk

Deep Space 8K now lets visitors behold virtual reconstructions of historical sites in 3-D and walk through them in the truest sense of the word.

Deep Space 8K: White Point

*White Point* is based on the premise that the observer is situated in the vanishing point. Visitors thus seem to move into the center of the light inside this single pixel

Deep Space 8K: TIME OUT

All three works are takes on “cooperative aesthetics” in which visitors to Deep Space 8K explore the changes their own movements bring about in the displayed projections and, in some instances, on the acoustic level too.

Deep Space 8K: GameSpace

GameSpace turns the Ars Electronica Center’s Deep Space 8K into an interactive multiplayer gaming arena.

Deep Space 8K: Timelapse

Combining highly detailed, fast-forward motion pictures with the extraordinarily high degree of resolution in Deep Space 8K opens our eyes to everyday events that we’ve never seen in this form before.

Deep Space 8K: Gigantic World Record 360º Gigapixel Photography

Jeffrey Martin specializes in creating photos of cities, usually shot from the top of a tower or skyscraper.

Deep Space 8K: IN2WHITE – MONT BLANC LARGEST PANORAMIC IMAGE and Wide Angles – Vast Land

In2White is a personal homage by photographer Filippo Blengini (IT) to the glacier-and-snow-covered realm of the white mountain: Mont Blanc.

Deep Space 8K: Post Refugee City

*Post Refugee City* records the realities of everyday life in a refugee camp—in this case, Al Zaatari in Jordan—and represents an effort to find new ways to deal with such modern-day mass migration.

Deep Space 8K: What Does Peace Look Like?

The Alfred Fried Photography Award is more than just a photo contest; it’s the world’s only competition that asks entrants to visually answer the question of what peace looks like.

Spaceship Earth

Magdalena Sick-Leitner — Fri, 21 Aug 2015 18:08:24 +0000

How rapidly are Earth’s glaciers melting away? What are the best times for farmers to plant and harvest their crops? What can be done to protect human populations from catastrophes like Fukushima and the Nepal earthquake?

From their orbits in outer space, modern hightech satellites track geographic, atmospheric and geologic changes and deliver updates on the current status of our natural habitat. Spaceship Earth focuses on satellite images and the incredible depth of information inherent in these astonishing pictures, as well as artistic interpretations of their themes. What do we learn by observing our planet from outer space, and how can we respond to what we find out? This question is the core consideration of an exhibition being staged jointly by the European Space Agency (ESA) and Ars Electronica.

Highlight Tour Ars Electronica Center

Martin Hieslmair — Wed, 19 Aug 2015 17:00:25 +0000

The Highlights Tour provides an overview of the Ars Electronica Center’s top attractions. An expert tour guide accompanies you through all exhibition areas. In addition to the highlights of the Museum of the Future including the new Deep Space 8K, this tour spotlights “Elements of Art and Science” and “Spaceship Earth,” two exhibitions that premiered at the 2015 Ars Electronica Festival.

Infos

Meeting Point: Infodesk at Ars Electronica Center (Map)
Duration: 1,5 hours
Language: German
Price: 3,50 € per person (not including admission) / every holder of a Festival Pass or One-Day Pass is entitled to visit the Ars Electronica Center at no extra charge.
Registration: center@aec.at or fill out the form on this page / Tickets available in the Ars Electronica Center

THU, September 3, 2015

11 AM
German

2:30 PM
English

3 PM
German

FRI, September 4, 2015

11 AM
German

2:30 PM
English

3 PM
German

SAT, September 5, 2015

11 AM
German

2:30 PM
English

3 PM
German

SUN, September 6, 2015

11 AM
German

2:30 PM
English

3 PM
German

MON, September 7, 2015

11 AM
German

2:30 PM
English

3 PM
German

Tour Registration

[contact-form-7]

Family Tour Ars Electronica Center

Martin Hieslmair — Wed, 19 Aug 2015 15:00:48 +0000

For families who’d like an introduction to the Ars Electronica Center within the framework of a guided tour, this is just the thing. The Family Tour is a fascinating, action-packed excursion with amazing experiences in store for adults and young people alike. And there’s always a bit of time left over for a little hands-on fun with a few of the installations.

Infos

Meeting point: Infodesk at Ars Electronica Center (Map)
Duration: 1,5 hours
Language: German
Price: 3,50 € per person (admission not included), Free tour for children up to 14 years (admission not included) / every holder of a Festival Pass or One-Day Pass is entitled to visit the Ars Electronica Center at no extra charge
Registration: center@aec.at or fill out the form on this page / Tickets available in the Ars Electronica Center

THU, September 3, 2015

11:30 AM
German

2 PM
German

FRI, September 4, 2015

11:30 AM
German

2 PM
German

SAT, September 5, 2015

11:30 AM
German

2 PM
German

3:30 PM
German

SUN, September 6, 2015

11:30 AM
German

2 PM
German

3:30 PM
German

MON, September 7, 2015

11:30 AM
German

2 PM
German

Tour Registration

[contact-form-7]

Connecting Cities: Deep City

raphaelgi — Mon, 17 Aug 2015 11:18:17 +0000

Deep City is a data visualization experiment investigating the collective information that defines a city’s present and future. Findings from Linz, Vienna, Berlin, and New York are represented as visualized data layers and displayed on the four sides of the Ars Electronica Center building. 8 data sets that explore the tension between individuals, spaces, and resources were chosen and grouped into pairs: Growth / Diversity, Green Spaces / Bike Paths, Water Usage / Waste, and Density / Noise Exposure. By comparing the data sets, assumptions about individual behaviors and social customs can be explored and challenged.

Returning information

Ursula Feuersinger (AT) designed and constructed an interactive terminal to return the data to its source, the urban population, for reconsideration and evaluation. Observers of the project become participants, extracting hidden artifacts from the deep and bringing them to the surface. A crank allows participants to browse through color-coded topologic layers. When users pause on a given color, animated content is revealed, both on the Ars Electronica Center façade and on the terminal’s screen. The second interaction element is a 3D printed cube, a hand-sized, miniature model of the AEC building. By rotating the cube on the interface terminal, users can switch from one city to another and view the respective city’s content.

Deep City Video
Camera: Benjamin Skalet (DE), Claudia Schnugg (AT), Veronika Pauser (AT), Sigrid Nagele (AT)
Editing: Christian Haas (AT), Ursula Feuersinger (AT)

Design, Animation: Ursula Feuersinger (AT)
Sound: Richard Eigner, Roman Gerold (Ritornell/AT)
Technical Support: Leonard Pokropek (AT)

The Connecting Cities Research Residencies have been realized at the Ars Electronica Futurelab with the support of the Ars Electronica Residency Network.

Ars Electronica Blog

“Beneath the city, there are various layers that you can’t immediately see at first glance. These strata contain information that provides detailed and comprehensive descriptions of our coexistence and its framework circumstances.” Read more on the Ars Electronica Blog!

Connecting Cities is initiated by Public Art Lab in cooperation with Ars Electronica Futurelab Linz, Medialab-Prado Madrid, FACT Liverpool, Videospread Marseille, iMAL Brussels, Riga 2014, BIS Istanbul, m-cult Helsinki, Media Architecture Institute Vienna, Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb, in association with Aarhus University, Marseille-Provence 2013, MUTEK Montreal, Quartier des Spectacles Montreal, Foundation Bauhaus Dessau, Verve Cultural Sao Paulo, Federation Square Melbourne, xm:lab Saarbrücken, Sapporo Media Arts Lab, ETOPIA Zaragoza, The Concourse Sydney and 403 International Arts Center Wuhan.
With support of the Culture Programme 2007-2013 of the European Union.

Find more information on www.connectingcities.net

Connecting Cities: Urban Entropy

raphaelgi — Mon, 17 Aug 2015 11:01:32 +0000

Is complaining an act of civic participation? Urban Entropy by Dietmar Offenhuber (AT) is a public display of complaining and repair, a drama of maintenance and things that do not work. The façade of the Ars Electronica Center visualizes the work queue of the city of Linz public works department and reads the litany of citizen complaints to pedestrians passing by the building, which is conveniently located across the street from the City Hall.

Inside a filter bubble

By bringing complaints from the city’s website into the physical space of the city, Urban Entropy makes a point about an important difference between these two spaces. While civic participation increasingly takes place online, we stay inside a filter bubble and only find what we are looking for. IRL (“In Real Life”), the public space of the city, we cannot foresee or choose whom we might run into, for better or worse, just like the involuntary listeners to the chorus of Urban Entropy’s complaints.

Urban Entropy video
Camera: Benjamin Skalet (DE), Claudia Schnugg (AT), Veronika Pauser (AT)
Editing: Michael Mayr (AT), Veronika Pauser (AT)

The Connecting Cities Research Residencies have been realized at the Ars Electronica Futurelab with the support of the Ars Electronica Residency Network.

Ars Electronica Blog

““Urban Entropy” is an effort to visually portray common, everyday urban “griping”—i.e. complaints submitted by individual citizens to the powers that be.” Read more on the Ars Electronica Blog!

Find more information on www.connectingcities.net

Connecting Cities: blindage.

raphaelgi — Mon, 17 Aug 2015 10:20:06 +0000

blindage. is the french word for a wall, a shield or an envelope, which protects what’s inside. The project by nita. (AT) focuses on the use of digital masks by contemporary human beings. It is divided into three chapters: fleurêve, synanthrope, and abîme. Each one translates metaphors into visual art by using dance, taxidermy and handmade organic masks – a mélange of analogue and digital techniques: overhead projection, microscoped organic footage, and digital intervention focusing on ways to camouflage reality. As façades are also masks, the project invites the audience to peek beyond the Ars Electronica Center façade.

Idea, masks, visuals: Anita Brunnauer (nita.) (AT)
Camera, edit: Benjamin Skalet (simp) (DE)
Audio: simp (DE) & STSK (DE)
Technical support: Leonard Prokropek (AT)
Postproduction, motion graphics: Ludwig Tomaschko (AT), Benjamin Skalet (DE), Anita Brunnauer (AT)
Vocals, protagonist chapter nº1 “fleurêve”: Sophia Hagen (soia) (AT)
Dancer chapter nº2 “synanthrope”: Paz Katrina Jimenez (cat) (AT)
Protagonist chapter nº3 “abîme.”: Emily M. Dominguez Castillo (soulcat e-phife) (AT)

The Connecting Cities Research Residencies have been realized at the Ars Electronica Futurelab with the support of the Ars Electronica Residency Network.

Ars Electronica Blog

“I have the feeling that we don masks on a daily basis—for example, on social media sites. That which we expose to the outside world rarely reflects the way we really feel. I also think that the Ars Electronica Center’s LED façade can be a sort of mask in that this stylish outer shell effectively veils how the people inside feel.” Read more on the Ars Electronica Blog!

Find more information on www.connectingcities.net

Connecting Cities: Flame

raphaelgi — Mon, 17 Aug 2015 10:04:23 +0000

Fire has been strongly associated with human society since early civilization. For the first hunters and gatherers, and even more for settled societies, fire defined the central gathering point and meeting place. As civilizations became more complex and villages evolved more and more into cities, fire started to become the power that forged the tools and weapons of this complexity, and hence initiated the progress of technology. Its symbolic representation rose to its highest form with the industrial revolution, where steam engines converted this power directly into usable energy, which eventually became the main driving force of the cities.

Forgotten fire

At the same time, however, this power was taken from the hands of the public and placed under the control of a few. When fire and its accompanying customs and traditions started to disappear from the cities, the people lost their say in the rules that governed them and their cities. Both fire and the mechanisms of the city became invisible, disappearing from sight and becoming incomprehensible to its citizens. Flame by Tamer Aslan (TR) und Onur Sönmez (TR) wants to give the fire back to the people, to help them forge the tools of the new century, and to burn to the ground the institutions that restrain them, if necessary.

Metal work, fire sculpture: Bernhard Ranner (AT)
Fire hardware: TBFpyrotec (AT)

Supporting Music

10:15-10:45 PM
Songs about Fire by Tracy Redhead (AU) and Michael Mayr (AT), two musicians from opposite parts off the world team up to reinterpret and resurrect songs from the past and present. With their minimalist setup of acoustic guitars and vocals, they don’t want to set the world on fire but start a little flame in the hearts.
10:45-10:55 PM
Die Kreativbeamten (Creative Clerks / AT): Brutal Germanization of tragic English love songs from the former lost century full of war and anger. Singing and Banjo – Guaranteed without emotion!
10:55-11:00 PM
Tragic romantic danube tune interpreted on the accordion by Stefan Mittlböck-Jungwirth-Fohringer (AT).

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