exhibition – Post City

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.

OK Night

Magdalena Sick-Leitner — Wed, 19 Aug 2015 12:41:50 +0000

A perennial favorite of music- and art-loving night owls, OK Night includes a performance-studded tour of the CyberArts 2015 exhibition that’s remaining open until 10 PM, numerous live and DJ sets in both alfresco (OK Plaza) and indoor (Solaris) settings, as well as the opportunity to take in one more session at Electronic Theatre and enjoy outstanding works submitted for Prix Ars Electronica prize consideration.

CyberArts 2015

Guided tour with the OK staff
20:00 – 20:20: Rawr! A Study in Sonic Skulls
Brückenstudio
20:25 – 20:40: Electromechanical Modular
3. OG – Foyer, balcony
20:50 – 21:15: Tipping Point
Dachboden
21:30 – 22:00: Soft Revolvers
U-Hof, Hall

Electronic Theatre
20:00 – 21:30: Höhenrausch, Summer Cinema
21:45 – 23:15 Uhr: Moviemento, Movie 2

Live
21:00 – 21:30: Odd (Klub Sir3ne, Wien/AT)
21:30 – 22:30: Fontarrian (Antime/Disko404, Graz/AT)

Solaris DJs
Davi dB & Der Fux (Salopp!/Jhruza rec./AT)

Soya C(o)u(l)ture

raphaelgi — Mon, 17 Aug 2015 11:59:03 +0000

Soya C(o)u(l)ture–Workshops
FRI September 4, 2015, 11 AM-2 PM
SUN September 6, 2015, 11 AM-2 PM, 3 PM-6 PM
PostCity, Fashion District

Presentations
Symposium Connecting Cities – Connecting Citizens
THU September 3, 2015, 2:30 PM
PostCity, Conference Square

Symposium Smart Creativity, Smart Democracy
SAT September 5, 2015, 10 AM
Ars Electronica Center, Sky Loft

Prix Forum V – Residency Artists
SAT September 5, 2015, 4:15 PM-5:15 PM
OK im OÖ Kulturquartier

For their artistic research project Soya C(o)u(l)ture, XXLab (ID) developed a procedure which takes the liquid waste that’s a byproduct of soya processing and makes useful things out of it: biofuel, foodstuffs and leather-like textiles. To do it, the research team uses various bacteria and cell cultures.

Instead of Waste, Income

The mission of Soya C(o)u(l)ture is, on one hand, to minimize the water pollution that goes along with soya production, and to introduce new methods that are simple, cheap and sustainable. Plus, XXLab aims to provide Indonesian women living in rural areas with new opportunities for gainful employment. XXLab regularly holds workshops to put in place the preconditions for this to happen.

Numerous Workshops and Presentations

In recognition of this innovative methodology as well as their endeavors to protect the environment and improve the lives of a great many people, XXLab is this year’s recipient of [the next idea] voestalpine art and technology grant, a program staged jointly by the Ars Electronica Residency Network and voestalpine.
At the 2015 Ars Electronica Festival, Soya C(o)u(l)ture will demonstrate how it’s done at a show kitchen set up in PostCity, and the group is the subject of a presentation in CyberArts 2015. XXLab representatives will also take part in the Connecting Cities – Connecting Citizens, the Council of Europe’s Symposium Smart Creativity, Smart Democracy and the Prix Forum V – Residency Artists.
At three workshops in the Soya C(o)u(l)ture show kitchen, festivalgoers will have the opportunity to get hands-on experience upcycling waste water from soya processing.

What Does Peace Look Like?

raphaelgi — Tue, 11 Aug 2015 07:54:57 +0000

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. Almost a year after the 2014 Fried Award was bestowed in the Republic of Austria’s parliament on International Day of Peace in September 2014, juror Lois Lammerhuber (AT) has curated a 12-screen exhibition of the prizewinning works for the Ars Electronica Festival.

Prizewinners, Shortlist and Special Selection

The grand prize was awarded to Russian photographer Emile Gataullin for Towards the Horizon, images capturing moments of peaceful humanity in rural Russia. Five honorable mentions went to Pierre Adenis for Tempelhofer Freiheit, Heidi & Hans-Jürgen Koch for Bison, Max Kratzer for Status, Davide Tremolada for Heal and Ann-Christine Woehrl for IN/VISIBLE. The exhibition also includes a selection of 320 works chosen by the jurors and all short-listed works. Prints of selected images will also be on display in PostCity.

Deep Space 8K: What Does Peace Look Like?

raphaelgi — Tue, 11 Aug 2015 07:52:27 +0000