The Ars Electronica Center’s popular Kids’ Research Laboratory is a setting for what Albert Einstein called “the highest form of research”: play. At PostCity during the Ars Electronica Festival, the Kids’ Research Laboratory is operating a bigger-than-life-size play- & proving ground for up-and-coming explorers 4-8 years of age.
Play with the Elements
The spacious location features sandscapes, earth zones, watercourses and spots to toy with light and air. The watchwords: Discovering new stuff via trial & error. This is a site for digging, splashing, tossing, grinding and pitching in. Kids’ experiences with elementary materials like sand and water provide them with a fundamental understanding of volume and density, cause and effect.
Lab and Parents’ Corner
At the center of this wide-ranging playground is a laboratory where youngsters with an especially hearty appetite for knowledge can get a helping hand from Infotrainers to carry on their inquiries and get to the bottom of questions that arose during their playtime activities. In the Parents’ Corner, young and old can access media support in broadening their scientific horizon.
Ars Electronica Blog
“In fact, if you consider what other museums — in Austria and elsewhere in Europe too — have been doing, then you see that young people’s first contacts with technical and scientific topics don’t occur until they begin attending elementary school. Nevertheless, kids nowadays start encountering high tech and new media at a relatively early age, so I think it’s a good idea to get them started with a bit of an introduction and some training in the preschool phase.” Read more on the Ars Electronica Blog!