PostCity – Post City

Ars Electronica Opening

Martin Hieslmair — Wed, 26 Aug 2015 11:14:37 +0000

Fog horns resound to mark the opening of the 2015 Ars Electronica Festival and its prime venue, POST CITY.

Search for Flawless Space

In his double spatial opening number, trombonist Bertl Mütter (AT) uses his paired instruments—das Mut- und das Wunderhorn—to pose a musical question entitled irreprehensibilis? that enquires into what makes for a perfect location: How flawless must such a place be for none of it to have to be taken back? After all, in sharp contrast to another festival venue, Mariendom, the cathedral that, in Mütter’s opinion, still pretty much lives up to the intention of its builders, the Postal Service logistics center was “shockingly soon” obsolete. Nevertheless, Mütter himself carries on, visibly and invisibly, nearly inaudibly and then back with vehemence, and ultimately, as sort of the stunt of the evening, from the Train Hall’s bridge.

Tilting Piano

Rupert Huber (AT) then tilts his piano into a horizontal electronic field. His tender depressions of the keys, barely enough to coax out a tone, lets the piano resound on its own. The stronger he gets, the more and louder the tones get before vanishing into an acoustic pillar, and the more intensively they are, in turn, fed into an accompanying plug-in that extends and expands them, gives them wings, and transforms them into a timeless meshwork. He’s followed on stage by Maki Namekawa (AT/JP), who’ll interpret selected etudes by Philip Glass, and thus lesser-known works from the American composer’s oeuvre, on the concert grand.

Musical Migration

Then it’s time for Peter Androsch and Anatol Bogendorfer (Hörstadt/AT) to fire up their Diaspora Maschine and use musical ways & means to consider the wave of refugees currently crashing onto Europe’s coastlines and the utter failure of an entire political class.

Mass Extinction

Next up is raum.null, a collaboration of Chris Bruckmayr (AT) and Dobrivoje Milijanovic (SR), with a performance entitled the sixth wave of mass extinction that goes acoustically and visually to the core of postmodern society, limning the potential threat inherent in a worldwide die-off of flora and fauna that has already gotten quietly underway.

Parallel Worlds and Retro Films

Lightening things up a bit are DJs Lotic and M.E.S.H from Salon 2000, a parallel universe of music, film and art engendered in 2013, and DJs Uli Mayr and Thomas Scheutz (AT). The program will be preceded by and punctuated with short films by pioneering Linz filmmaker Alexander Hans Puluj (AT). In 1949 he founded Linz’s first art cinema and built up a film production company that specialized in animation, industrial films and tourism footage, and thus indirectly captured the city’s development during the postwar boom years.

Opening Schedule POST CITY

7:30 PM-1 AM	Naked Veriti
7:30 PM-8:15 PM	Admittance to the sounds of foghorns and drums
8:15 PM-8:30 PM	irreprehensibilis? (1) Bertl Mütter (AT)
8:30 PM-9 PM	Rupert Huber (AT)
9 PM-9:30 PM	Maki Namekawa (AT/JP): Etudes by Philip Glass (US)
9 PM-11 PM	Uli Mayr (AT) and Thomas Scheutz (AT)
9:30 PM-9:40 PM	irreprehensibilis? (2) Bertl Mütter (AT)
9:40 PM-10:20 PM	Diaspora Maschine, Peter Androsch (AT) & Anatol Bogendorfer (AT) in cooperation with Hard-Chor, Landestheater Linz, Landesmusikschulwerk and Anton Bruckner Privatuniversität
10:20 PM-11 PM	Chris & Didi Bruckmayr (AT) with Dobrivoje Milijanovic (SR) aka raum.null Visuals: Veronika Pauser aka Vero Visual, Peter Holzkorn aka Voidsignal and Florian Berger aka Flockaroo, Produktion: Claudia Schnugg
11 PM-12 midnight	DJ M.E.S.H (presented by Salon 2000)
12 midnight-1 AM	DJ LOTIC (presented by Salon 2000)

POST CITY Symposium I: Future Mobility – A Challenge for Art & Science

Martin Hieslmair — Mon, 24 Aug 2015 15:17:55 +0000

The concept of mobility used in this POST CITY Symposium is very broadly defined. It encompasses a spectacular R&D prototype of a self-driving car, a survey of urban mobility worldwide as well as the mobility of data, and all the millions of people who are now migrating to cities. Alexander Mankowsky (DE) will talk about the automotive R&D going on at Mercedes-Benz, and then Martina Mara (AT) will go into the relationship between human beings and autonomous vehicles. Shunji Yamanaka (JP) and Takayuki Furuta (JP) of the Future Robotics Technology Center will present their latest robots. Hiroshi Ishii (JP/US) will elaborate on global data traffic, and then Ou Ning (CN) and Kilian Kleinschmidt (DE) will deal with the movements of huge numbers of refugees: Ning with the great many Chinese people leaving that country’s rural areas; Kleinschmidt with refugee housing that’s fit for human beings.

Schedule

10 AM	Alexander Mankowsky (DE)
10:25 AM	Martina Mara (AT)
10:50 AM	Q + A
11 AM	Shunji Yamanaka (JP), Takayuki Furuta (JP)
11:20 AM	Coffee Break
11:30 AM	Hiroshi Ishii (JP/US)
12 noon	Q + A
12:10 noon	Ou Ning (CN)
12:40 noon	Kilian Kleinschmidt (DE)
1:10 PM	Q + A

Moderator: Gerfried Stocker (AT)

Alexander Mankowsky (DE) has worked in the research unit at Daimler AG since 1989, initially focusing on societal trends in mobility. This led him in 2001 to his current field of work – ‘Futures Studies & Ideation’.

Martina Mara (AT) is a Key Researcher at the Ars Electronica Futurelab, where she is responsible for the research field of RoboPsychology.

Takayuki Furuta (JP) is general manager of Future Robotics Technology Center (fuRo) at Chiba Institute of Technology.

Shunji Yamanaka (JP) is a design engineer and Professor at the Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies at The University of Tokyo.

Hiroshi Ishii (JP/US) is a Jerome B. Wiesner Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at the MIT Media Lab.

Ou Ning (CN) is a frequent contributor to various magazines, books and exhibition catalogues and has lectured around the world. He lives and works in Bishan Village, where he founded Bishan Commune 2011, an intellectual group devoted to rural reconstruction movement in China.

Kilian Kleinschmidt (DE) is an international networker and humanitarian expert with over 25 years experience in a wide range of countries, emergencies and refugee camps as United Nations official, Aid worker and Diplomat.

Gerfried Stocker (AT) is artistic director of Ars Electronica.

POST CITY Symposium II: Connecting Cities – Connecting Citizens

Martin Hieslmair — Mon, 24 Aug 2015 15:10:45 +0000

Connecting Cities – Connecting Citizens will scrutinize from various perspectives how future Smart Cities can best draw upon the imagination and inventiveness of their inhabitants.

Why a high level of media skills on the part of citizens constitutes a precondition for this will be explained by Divina Frau-Meigs (FR). A corresponding best-practice example of knowledge production in the city will be presented by Takuya Nomura (JP): Knowledge Capital, a project in Osaka. Then Joana Varon (BR) of the Deep Lab hacker collective elucidates successful co-creation. In the afternoon session, Adolf Krischanitz (AT), Ian Banerjee (AT/ IN) and Hans Reitz (DE) will take a look at current urban architectural projects in Europe and China. Hans Reitz (DE) will introduce in the world of Social Business City.

Schedule

2:30 PM	Divina Frau-Meigs (FR)
2:50 PM	Takuya Nomura (JP)
3:10 PM	Joana Varon (BR)
3:30 PM	Q + A
3:50 PM	Adolf Krischanitz (AT)
4:20 PM	Ian Banerjee (AT/IN)
4:50 PM	Hans Reitz (DE)
5:20 PM	Q + A

Moderator: Michael Doser (AT/CH)

Divina Frau-Meigs (FR) is Professor at the Université Paris 3- Sorbonne Nouvelle.

Takuya Nomura (JP) is General Producer of the Knowledge Capital Association and CEO of SUPERSTATION, Inc. in Osaka, Japan as well as Visiting Professor of Kansai University and of Otemae University, Japan.

Joana Varon (BR) member of Deep Lab female hacker collective and Founder Director of Coding Rights.

Adolf Krischanitz (AT) co-founded the architectural firm Missing Link. From 1992 to 2011, he was Professor of Urban Renewal and Design at the University of the Arts Berlin. Since 1979, Krischanitz has worked as a freelance architect with studios in Vienna and Zurich.

Ian Banerjee (AT/IN) is an architect, urban planner and educational researcher living in Vienna.

Hans Reitz (DE) is the Creative Advisor to Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus. Together they founded The Grameen Creative Lab to spread Yunus’ concept of social business all over the world.

Michael Doser (AT/CH) is a particle physicist working at CERN.

POST CITY Symposium III: Post Public, Post Private

Martin Hieslmair — Mon, 24 Aug 2015 15:05:39 +0000

Both the public sphere as well as the private, personal sphere have changed fundamentally in recent decades—both online and offline. The process of change, which is far from complete, confronts city planners and architectural designers with a tremendous challenge in their efforts to manifest in the form of buildings and urban designs the new interrelationships among what used to be discrete public and private spheres. Carlo Ratti (IT/US) interprets “public space” as a part of a zone (no longer all-encompassing) of a new world of work in which, among other things, exterior space is being used as office space. Geeta Mehta (IN/US) reports on her committed efforts on behalf of user-generated cities on one hand and global strategies for the acquisition of social capital on the other. A similar approach is taken by Kristien Ring (US/DE), who reflects on residential and commercial projects in Berlin in which not everything is subordinated to maximizing return on investment. Peter Androsch (AT), a man whose political activism has focused on noise pollution, talks about how city dwellers of tomorrow can raise their voices to really be heard.

Schedule

10 AM	Carlo Ratti (IT/US)
10:30 AM	Geeta Mehta (IN/US)
11 AM	Q + A
11:10 AM	Kristien Ring (US/DE)
11:40 AM	Peter Androsch (AT)
12:10 noon	Q + A

Moderator: Derrick de Kerckhove (CA)

Carlo Ratti (IT/US) is director of MIT Senseable City Lab.

Geeta Mehta (IN/US) is an adjunct professor of architecture and urban design at Columbia University in New York.

Kristien Ring (US/DE) is an architect, curator, and publicist, and founder of AA PROJECTS I Interdisciplinary Studio.

Peter Androsch (AT) is a composer, musician, artist, researcher, writer, and lecturer.

Derrick de Kerckhove (CA) is Scientific Advisor of the association Osservatorio TuttiMedia, scientific director of the digital culture magazine Media Duemila, research supervisor of the Planetary Collegium T-Node in Trento, and creator along with Maria Pia Rossignaud of the Atelier of Connective Intelligence.

POST CITY Symposium IV: Habitat 21

Martin Hieslmair — Mon, 24 Aug 2015 14:50:04 +0000

Just like the exhibition of the same name, the Habitat 21 symposium also focuses on various exemplary ways and means to successfully handle the challenges of the urbanization process in the 21st century. Particular emphasis will be on the reconstruction of Nepalese cities and villages following a horrendous earthquake; Michael Badics (Ars Electronica Solutions/AT), Hans Reitz, (Grameen Creative Lab/DE) and Klaus Dieterstorfer (Engineers without Borders/AT) will have something to say on this subject. Lei Yang (CN), ecological city planner in Peking, considers urbanization as a process of catastrophic dimensions. Ian Banerjee (AT/IN) and Ingrid Fischer-Schreiber (AT) will present Digital Community projects from around the world. Katya Serova (RU/US) and Eduard Haiman (RU/US) will elaborate on methods of understanding cities by means of complex data analysis of city dwellers’ behavior. Katja Schechtner (AT) and Dietmar Offenhuber (AT) will argue on behalf of provisional urban infrastructure made by citizens themselves, and Roland Krebs (AT) will give a briefing on city planning tools designed to foster involvement by all those affected by building measures.

Schedule

1:30 PM	Michael Badics (AT)
1:45 PM	Hans Reitz (DE)
2 PM	Lei Yang (CN)
2:15 PM	Ian Banerjee (AT/IN), Ingrid Fischer-Schreiber (AT)
2:30 PM	Katya Serova (RU/US), Eduard Haiman (RU/US)
2:45 PM	Katja Schechtner (AT), Dietmar Offenhuber (AT)
3 PM	Roland Krebs (AT)
3:15 PM	Q + A

Michael Badics (AT) is senior director of AE Solutions, a new division of Ars Electronica, and is responsible for developing the most promising prototypes and research results of the Ars Electronica context into products ready for real-world implementation.

Hans Reitz (DE) is the Creative Advisor to Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus. Together they founded The Grameen Creative Lab to spread Yunus’ concept of social business all over the world.

Lei Yang (CN) is the Deputy Director in CBC Academy, a curator and a researcher on urban future.

Ian Banerjee (AT/IN) is an architect, urban planner and educational researcher living in Vienna.

Ingrid Fischer-Schreiber (AT) is a translator, editor, and project manager.

Katya Serova (RU/US) is part of Habidatum.

Eduard Haiman (RU/US) is part of Mathrioshka.

Katja Schechtner (AT) holds a dual appointment with MIT Media Lab and the Asian Development Bank to create and implement large-scale urban technology investment programs by integrating new data technologies with best practices in urban planning and management.

Dietmar Offenhuber (AT) is assistant professor at Northeastern University, Boston, in the departments of Art + Design and Public Policy. He holds a PhD in Urban Planning from MIT, and studied at the MIT Media Lab and TU Vienna. Dietmar investigates urban infrastructure such as formal and informal waste systems and has published books on the subjects of Urban Data, Accountability Technologies, and Urban Informatics.

Roland Krebs (AT) is an urban planning specialist with experience in strategy planning, project development and management and urban design.

Future Catalyst Program for the Development of the POST CITY Kit

Martin Hieslmair — Mon, 24 Aug 2015 14:12:52 +0000

Two programs will occupy the focal point of the Post City Kit activities in the context of the Future Catalyst Program – a toolkit of ideas, strategies, devices and prototypes for the city of the future: The Future Innovators Summit and the Connected Intelligence Atelier.

Future Innovators Summit

The Future Innovators Summit is a creative system which has been developed by Ars Electronica Futurelab and Hakuhodo and brings together inspiring artists, technologists, social activists and young entrepreneurs from all over the world.

Connected Intelligence Atelier

The Connected Intelligence Atelier has been developed by CTi – Culture and Technology International (Derrick de Kerckhove and Maria Pia Rossignaud) and is based on an international network of artists, academics and creative thinkers who join forces to find new ways and solutions.

Get to know more about the Post City Kit…

Program

THU Sept. 3, 2015, 11 AM-12 noon

THU Sept. 3, 2015, 1:30 PM-2:30 PM

Future Catalyst Program/POST CITY Kit: Connecting Ideas I + II

Future Innovators Summit & Connected Intelligence Atelier

First presentations

POST CITY, Conference Square

FRI Sept. 4, 2015, 10 AM-12 noon

FRI Sept. 4, 2015, 1 PM-5:30 PM

Future Catalyst Program/POST CITY Kit: Workshop

Future Innovators Summit

POST CITY, FC-Platz 1-3

FRI Sept. 4, 2015, 10 AM-12 noon

FRI Sept. 4, 2015, 1 PM-5:30 PM

Future Catalyst Program/POST CITY Kit: Workshop

Connected Intelligence Atelier

POST CITY, Atelier Room 1-2

SUN Sept. 6, 2015, 3:30 PM-5 PM

Future Catalyst Program/POST CITY Kit: Presentations

Future Innovators Summit & Connected Intelligence Atelier

POST CITY, Conference Square

Future Innovators Summit

Group A: Informed Trust – In a world of autonomous machines

POST CITY, FC-Platz 1

Fiona Zisch (AT/UK) is an architect and scientist and lecturer at the University of Innsbruck and the University of Westminster. She is currently finishing a transdisciplinary PhD in architecture and neuroscience at University College London.

Marcus Fiege (DE) develops and conducts research on innovative lighting concepts at Daimler AG.

Lena Mech (DK) is an urban game designer, a curator and a member of Copenhagen Game Collective.

Umut Gökcen Yilmaz (TR) founded Nomad as an experienced Android developer, software architect and a trainer.

Matthias Danzmayr (AT) has been studying architecture and was a part of MIT’s Senseable City Laboratory. His research interests lie in facilitating urban studies, architecture and technology to create a more sustainable future.

Group B: Future Citizens – How smart does a city have to be before we are afraid to live in it?

POST CITY, FC-Platz 2

Lars Lütze (DE) is Development Engineer at Daimler AG and supports the management in the topic of User Interaction & Security.

Aisen Caro Chacin (US) is currently designing assistive devices as Ph.D. candidate for the program of Empowerment Informatics at University of Tsukuba, Japan.

Hagar Elazari (IL) is an artist, a designer and an engineer. She designs Interactive light art.

Adrian Dabrowski (AT) is PhD candidate at the University of Technology in Vienna and employed as researcher at SBA Research.

Karl Pletschko (AT) is founder and CEO of Mopius. Mopius released the first version of the Nearspeak Software Development Kits (SDK).

Group C: Future Resilience – What types of resilience should we develop?

POST CITY, FC-Platz 3

Maja Smrekar (SI) is an intermedia artist who connects humanistic and natural sciences in transdisciplinary projects.

Nadine Sinner (DE) is working at Daimler for the brand smart.

Kimitaro Hattori (JP) started to work as a designer at Hakuhodo after his graduation and continues his artistic work.

Pamela Cajilig (PH) is a design and business anthropologist and co-founder of Curiosity Design Research, a Manila-based consultancy.

Diego Trujillo Pisanty (MX) is an artist working with technology, approaching it not only as a medium but also as the embodiment of human practices and attitudes.

Stefan Mertl (AT) is a seismologist and photographer.

Mentors

Geeta Mehta (IN/US) is an adjunct professor of architecture and urban design at Columbia University in New York.

Hiroshi Ishii (JP/US) is a Jerome B. Wiesner Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at the MIT Media Lab.

Facilitators

Kyoko Someya (JP) joined Hakuhodo in 1987, starting as an account executive. She possesses a wide range of job experience including action designing, purchase behavior researching, interactive planning and producing, planning and producing of cultural projects and businesses, and more, with many different team styles for companies in various types of fields.

Jin Shimada (JP) is the Corporate Officer of Hakuhodo i-studio Inc., Hakuhodo’s digital production company.

Kazuko Tanaka (JP) joined Hakuhodo in 1998 and searches for a new culture and new meanings in working, parenting, and living.

Connected Intelligence Atelier

Group D: “Publicy” – the transformation of private and public

POST CITY, Atelier

Mark Federman (CA) is a consultant, facilitator, educator, strategist, and leadership coach, with a practice and research focus on transforming organizational culture. His doctoral research invented Valence Theory which defines the “connected relationship” organization, and helps leaders enable the possibility of an alternate future for their organizations and society.

Yasuaki Kakehi (JP) received his PhD degree in Interdisciplinary Information Studies from the University of Tokyo in 2007. Now he works as an associate professor at Keio University. He developed interactive media integrating human, physical materials and digital information, and created art works based on his own innovative technologies.

Agnes Aistleitner (AT) has made various internships in Art, Fashion and PR in Vienna, Los Angeles and New York since 2009. In 2012 she received a Golden Nica for her short film state of revolution about the revolution in Egypt. Since 2012 she has created various projects, ranging from fashion-art exhibitions such as globalcitizen, the online learning platform pilot wahlzuckerl.org to the food project floraison.at.

Over the past 15 years, Gary Schwartz (CA) has played a leadership role in the mobile marketing industry. He is the author of “THE IMPULSE ECONOMY” and “FAST SHOPPER, SLOW STORE” published by Simon & Schuster, Atria Imprint. In 2014 Gary was selected as the “Retail Innovator of the Year” by Retail Touchpoints. He is CEO of Impact Mobile and an alum of Columbia University in New York and the Stanford University Center in Yokohama, where he was the recipient of the Asia and Japan Foundation Fellowships.

Group E: Smart Democracy

POST CITY, Atelier

Maria Pia Rossignaud (IT) is editor of digital culture magazine Media Duemila and Vice President of the Osservatorio TuttiMedia’s. Creator along with Derrick de Kerckhove Atelier Connective Intelligence. Organizes the prize Nostalgia for the Futuro and meetings on topics of burning actuality.

Sangkyu Rho (KR) is professor of Information Systems at Seoul National University. He co-founded a couple of social media startups and is now participating in interdisciplinary research in networks at Organic Media Lab.

Sirin Bahar Demirel (TR): After graduating from the cinema department at Galatasaray University, Istanbul in 2010, she finished her MA in Artistic Direction of Cultural Projects at Université Paul Valéry, France. She has worked as assistant director in feature documentaries. She continues to work on her photography, video and street art projects in Istanbul.

So Kanno (JP) graduated in Design Informatics at the Musashino Art University and completed the Institute of Advanced Media Art and Science. He won several Art prices including the Japan Media Art Festival New Faces Award.

Group F: Strategies to elicit community involvement

POST CITY, Atelier

Derrick de Kerckhove (CA/IT) is a guru of the digital age, who directed the McLuhan Program in Culture & Technology of Toronto between 1983 and 2008. He is Scientific Advisor of the association Osservatorio TuttiMedia, scientific director of the digital culture magazine Media Duemila, research supervisor of the Planetary Collegium T-Node in Trento, and creator along with Maria Pia Rossignaud of the Atelier of Connective Intelligence.

Angela Oguntala (US) is a designer, working at the intersection of technology and futures studies. She’s a graduate of the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design and currently heads up an innovation lab in Copenhagen, researching and developing products and scenarios around emerging technologies.

Tamer Aslan (TR) is a Creative Technologist born in Istanbul, based in Vienna. After his time in Ars Electronica Futurelab, he is in the process of setting up his own studio, to further tangle with the topics of Playful City and Belief Objects.

Pablo Honey (ES) is Experience Design Director at R/GA in New York, the agency for the Connected Age, where he develops connected products and stories for global companies.

Agnès Yun (KR) is the founder of Organic Media Lab specializing in media evolution and network business. After earning her Ph.D in sociology from Paris-Descartes University, Sorbonne, she served as director of the SK Communications Research Institute. She is also speaker, writer, and an avid blogger.

European Digital Art and Science Network Meeting

Martin Hieslmair — Fri, 21 Aug 2015 18:58:13 +0000

Together with seven well-known artistic and cultural institutions, Ars Electronica launched the European Digital Art and Science Network, a Europe-wide initiative offering artists the chance to spend several weeks at the ESO or CERN followed by a stay at the Ars Electronica Futurelab. The results of the residencies as well as a series exhibitions and conferences are now being presented at the Ars Electronica Festival and subsequently at the facilities of all networks members. At this network conclave, attendees will discuss various cultural and artistic positions in Europe. The participants are Lale Eric Dobrivoje (Center for the promotion of science/SR), Richard Kitta (DIG Gallery/SK), José Carlos Arnal (Zaragoza City of Knowledge Foundation/ES), Jurij Krpan (Kapelica Gallery/Kersnikova, SI), Robert Devcic (GV Art/UK) Lucía García (Laboral/ES) and Diane McSweeney (Science Gallery/IE).

Post City Kit Exhibition

Martin Hieslmair — Fri, 21 Aug 2015 18:40:55 +0000

Post City Kit is a toolkit of ideas, strategies, devices and prototypes for the city of the future. The city is – and will remain – a scene of a permanent human life and survival experiment. In condensed form here culture(s), social systems and economic and political policies of their time are coming to light. Get to know more about the Post City Kit… The Post City Kit Exhibition shows with numerous prototypes and project presentations possible development directions towards the urban habitats for the upcoming human generations.

F 015 Luxury in Motion

The F 015 not only represents the technical realization of autonomous driving. It also shows how self-driving cars are going to change our society as the automobile moves beyond its role as a means of transportation to become a mobile living space.

Halluc IIx

Halluc II is a robot/vehicle that can cope with the natural and rough environment.

ILY-A

ILY-A is a three-wheel one-person compact electric mobility vehicle that transforms into four configurations to meet the needs of a wide variety of situations.

ON THE FLY

ON THE FLY is an innovative infotainment system which integrates paper with digital media.

Genium – Bionic Prosthetic System

The innovative Genium leg prosthesis system offers for the first time the opportunity to walk with a gait that is incredibly close to the natural physiological one.

D-Dalus: A New Way of Traveling

The D-Dalus is the “enfant terrible” of the aircraft industry with outstanding and surprising new flight features.

J1 Electric Motorcycle

The J1 Electric Motorcycle is a futuristic electric cruiser with innovative energy technology and first series motorcycle with a range of 200 km.

Cargo Cult Segway

The cargo cults are strange mockups of imperialism, and at the same time the preservation of old traditions.

Fahrradi Farfalla FFX

Following the tremendous success of the predecessor object Ferdinand GT3 RS, the current model Fahrradi Farfalla FFX is an attempt to further develop the concept of the mimicry encasement based on muscle-driven drive technique (muscle car) in an evolutionary manner.

Big Robot Mk1

The Big Robot Project in the PhD program in Empowerment Informatics, University of Tsukuba, aims to develop the world’s largest robot in which a pilot can ride and move.

Robots in Architecture

Robots in Architecture presents ideas and projects, that demonstrate how robots can be put to good use in design and production processes by those working in the creative field.

eMotionSpheres

With the eMotionSpheres, Festo shows how several flying objects can move in a coordinated manner and within a defined space.

Noramoji Project

The Noramoji Project is a Website and an Opensource project. The old fonts used on the signs of local stores may not be as sophisticated as a precisely designed commercial font, but these “stray letters” (Noramoji) still have their own unique charm.

Internet Yami-Ichi

The Internet Yami-Ichi (Black Market) is a one day flea market which deals “Internet-ish” things, face-to-face, in actual space.

Renaming the City

In conjunction with the 2015 Ars Electronica Festival, South African artists Marcus Neustetter and Stephen Hobbs are focusing on Volksgarten. Their “Renaming the City” project invites folks living in Linz to name a route on which lots of us love to stroll—the main promenade through Volksgarten.

FOCUS

The FOCUS application for mobile devices is a camera function with a fun new wrinkle.

KURUMA-IKU Lab

The Kuruma-Iku Lab is a research and development initiative that focuses on the relationships between people and cars and invites children and creators to join the investigation into sustainable roles for cars in our future society.

Quasar

The Quasar series comprises of three sculptural helmets and interactive experiences, fifteen photographs and three VR screen captures.

Beauty Technology

With Beauty Technology the Brazilian artist Katia Cánepa Vega plays with the possibility of using skin and other body parts as interfaces for controlling technology.

A Wearable Studio Practice

Hannah Perner-Wilson (AT) and Andrew Quitmeyer (US) have designed a vest with lots of functional features that let a wearer attach various electronic gadgets and wear them right on his/her body.

Post-City Kits from the University of Tsukuba (JP)

During the 2015 Futurelab Academy programme with the Empowerment Informatics PhD programme at Japan’s University of Tsukuba, a leading research university with a visionary focus in human-centred cybernetics, two student teams have produced experimental projects

Vivid Dresses

In Vivid Dresses Dorota Sadovská takes as her theme natural creative processes, the deformation of nature, and the self-inflicted distortion of human nature.

Biopresence

Biopresence creates Human DNA Trees by transcoding the essence of a human being within the DNA of a tree in order to create “Living Memorials” or “Transgenic Tombstones”.

Urban Death Project

The project‘s mission is to create a meaningful, equitable, and ecological urban alternative for the care and processing of the deceased. The Urban Death Project is a compost-based renewal system.

The FlyFactory

In the Fly Factory Búi Bjarmar Adalsteinsson uses the cocoons of fly maggots raised in species-appropriate fashion on organic garbage as well as a common, everyday mixer and a microwave to make a product resembling tofu.

SOYA C(O)U(L)TURE

The Indonesian female art collective XXLab works on a program to create fashion while dealing with environmental problems.

K-9_topology

K-9_topology researches the co-evolution of genes, evolution psychology, behavioral ecology, and hence cultural evolution through the paradigm wolf-dog-human.

bell

bell takes up an ancient tradition and hooks it up to a Geiger counter so the bell chimes as soon as the sensor picks up even the slightest hint of radioactivity.

Ubiquitous Infoscapes. The participatory performance of the city

Ubiquitous Commons (UC) is an international research effort dedicated to the production of a legal and technological toolkit which enables individuals to express how they wish their data to be used.

So similar, so different, so European

Produced under the auspices of the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations, “So similar, so different, so European” is a campaign that addresses the enlargement of the European Union.

Flashlightinstallation #1

How do flashes of light affect our perception? This installation space equipped with 64 electronic flash units from disposable cameras invites visitors to experience the effects of randomly flashing light impulses on their own bodies.

Rethinking Linz, Rebuilding Linz

City planning concerns all city residents and not just the experts. With a Shadowgram Wall the Post City Kit offers an opportunity to articulate ideas and wishes for the habitat of the 21st century and to share the ideas with the other festivalgoers.

CITIZENFOUR

CITIZENFOUR is a real-life thriller in which dramatic events unfold by the minute right before our eyes, the breathtakingly exciting account of the courageous step taken by a young whistleblower—urgent, disturbing, politically explosive.

Design Your City

Take part and improve the urban environment with your ideas! Design Your City allows you to experiment with the cityscape easily, quickly and playfully, to start discussions and to share it as a picture with other people.

TPB AFK: The Pirate Bay Away From Keyboard

Spanning a period of around 18 months, TPB AFK documents the continuing battle between the state prosecution in Sweden and the site’s runners Gottfrid Svartholm, Fredrik Neij, and Peter Sunde.

Wearable Studio Practice Workshop

As part of the Wearable Studio Practice Exhibition, Hannah Perner-Wilson (AT) and Andrew Quitmeyer (US) open their mobile electronics lab for up to 10 participants at a time. Volunteers are made familiar with the equipment, tools, and wearable furniture comprising the mobile laboratory.

Habitat 21

raphaelgi — Fri, 21 Aug 2015 18:30:56 +0000

The Habitat 21 exhibition considers the process of urbanization going on worldwide. Due to the social, economic and ecological facts and circumstances of the 21st century, cities no longer emerge and develop today only—as was previously the case—on the basis of their socio-geographic position. Habitat 21 focuses primarily on the efforts of urban planners worldwide to deal creatively with these framework conditions and create urban habitats that are sustainable in every respect. Ars Electronica shows several examples of the challenges they have to surmount in going about this and the clever solutions they’ve been coming up with—for instance, reconstruction of Nepalese cities devastated by an earthquake, and water & sewage infrastructure in Peking.

Beyond Survival

Lukas Maximilian Hüller (AT), Kilian Kleinschmidt (DE), Robert Pöcksteiner (AT),
Hannes Seebacher (AT)
POST CITY, Bunker

Beyond Survival 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. 60,000 children live in Al Zaatari, the world’s third-largest refugee camp with a total population of 100,000. Here, Hüller and Seebacher encountered children going through an extreme situation—life in a refugee camp—and got them involved in a photography project designed to underscore human beings’ inherent worth and dignity and to employ art as a means of survival.
That hopelessness isn’t all that prevails in this extreme situation is demonstrated by Snapshots in Time, a documentary by filmmaker Robert Pöcksteiner (AT). It reports—without commentary—how these people, mortally afraid, fled from neighboring Syria, and how they now deal with their fate and pass the time each day. It’s also an account of the words and deeds of Kilian Kleinschmidt, the UN representative who had previously been in charge of this refugee city, and a man totally committed to making it a place fit for human beings under these precarious circumstances.

After the Desaster

Ars Electronica Solutions (AT), The Grameen Creative Lab, Ingenieure ohne Grenzen Österreich (AT)/Engineers without Borders Austria (AT)

While the earthquakes in Nepal represent a deeply tragic event in a politically and economically vulnerable nation, the opportunity of reconstructing rural areas in a sustainable manner to improve livelihoods arises. Based on an ecovillage approach, the villages can be rebuilt more socially, economically and ecologically sustainable.

Social Business

The Grameen Creative Lab (DE)

Unlike traditional business, a social business operates for the benefit of addressing social needs that enable societies to function more efficiently. Muhammad Yunus has already shown the effectiveness of this new type of business: his clear focus on eradicating extreme poverty combined with his condition of economic sustainability has created numerous models with incredible growth potential.

Urban Design Laboratory

Technical Universitäy Vienna (AT),
Inter-American Development Bank IDB (US)

The Urban Design Laboratory (UDL) is an experimental design methodology combining people-centered planning, participatory planning tools, urban strategies and urban design.The leading elements of UDL are the people and the information they have about a specific, complex and local situation. Planners moderate and design sustainable new neighborhoods, revive abandoned areas, extend cites and design urban regeneration projects. In local workshops, local key actors and the community elaborate together planning visions, scenarios and urban strategies, which are developed further by the UDL designers.
Read more about this on the Ars Electronica Blog!

Urbanization as Desaster

CityIF (CN)

Urban disaster, born of rapid urbanization and resulting from the inter-reaction between the built environment (buildings, roads) and grown environment (climate, ecology and society), is generating
new and mixed urban landscapes. This is exemplified in Beijing, which, despite the rain and water deficiency, is frequently flooded due to the city’s faulty, antiquated water infrastructure and microclimate change in the region, and in the evolution of habitats due to the many urban migrant workers, who survive by living in neighborhoods between urban and rural areas and working unofficially. How can we “capture” and include them in passive/active participatory data mapping? On the bright side, will it inspire the idea of future urban habitats?

sensing place/placing sense 3: improvising infrastructure

Dietmar Offenhuber (AT), Katja Schechtner (AT)

This year’s instance of the sensing place/placing sense series investigates the pockets of informality inside the formal urban systems that structure our daily lives. Not only in the megacities of the Global South, life is characterized by a constant struggle with infrastructure. The electricity grid, logistics and supply chains, transportation—every system that is centrally planned and managed from above always requires some level of improvisation and tinkering from below in order to make the system work for its users.

Semantic Landscapes

Habidatum (RU), Mathrioshka (RU)

The city is not only the conglomerate of buildings and roads, jobs and homes and people moving in between—it is an interconnected environment constructed by the interactions of people with people
and with physical objects. What if we could unveil the invisible virtual city? What if we could explore its relation with the “actual” one we got used to seeing and dealing with? Habidatum http://www.habidatum.com (RU) presents a set of projects that approaches these questions and allow to explore the mental geography of Moscow, the emotions of tourists and locals in Barcelona, and the connections of Miracle Mile in South Miami with other urban areas via Twitter discussions.

Educational Urbanism

Ian Banerjee (Vienna University of Technology/AT/IN)

India in the meantime a made another big step forward. In January 2015, a major new national program called Make in India was presented to the international community. It is designed to transform India into a global manufacturing hub. This new program is inextricably connected with last year’s program of creating 100 Smart Cities for India. India has truly woken up to urban planning in a big way. Never in the country’s history, has urban planning been so en vogue as it is now!

Citythinking—WHY IS MORE

Eddea Arquitectura y Urbanismo (ES), [tp3] architekten/architects (AT)
Eddea http://www.eddea.es (ES), Andreas Henter, Harald Schönegger ([tp3] architekten/AT)

Citythinking is an open organization to display, rethink and adapt territorial organizations, linking economy, society and environment. For the group, the city is a superposition of simultaneous events, a strained network that links these three areas. WHY IS MORE is the question that is linked directly to the theme of development processes. Each adaptive change is accompanied by a categorical “why”. In nature, development tends towards perfection in order to be more efficient. But nothing is bigger, better or higher without a reason!

Superscape

JP architektur perspektiven (AT)

Superscape is a biennial Austrian architectural prize launched in 2014. Its mission is to spotlight innovative, visionary architectural concepts for the interplay of private and public spaces in an urban context. This year’s competition called for brilliant ideas to dovetail the two spheres under two specific conditions: the setting: Vienna; the utility horizon: the next 50 years.
The exhibition in PostCity showcases six designs that were shortlisted by the jury and then, at the invitation of JP architektur perspektiven, further developed by their creators. The spectrum ranges from small interventions in the public sphere to the development of elaborate, extensive new spatial structures.

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.