This is a showcase of excellence in contemporary media art. The CyberArts exhibition at the OK Center for Contemporary Art features the best works singled out for recognition by the 2016 Prix Ars Electronica. The world’s most coveted prize honoring creativity and pioneering spirit in media art has been awarded annually since 1987. Thousands of artists all over the world submit their works for prize consideration; a jury of experts from throughout the world evaluates the entries and selects the best. In addition to prize money, each grand prize winner also receives a Golden Nica statuette, which will be bestowed at the Ars Electronica Gala on Friday, September 9, 2016 in the Brucknerhaus. All the prizewinning works are on display in the CyberArts show at the OK.
Once again this year, the CyberArts exhibition will spotlight an array of outstanding works of media art from all over the world. The lineup includes an interactive espionage Installation by Christoph Wachter and Mathias Jud (CH), and Ann-Katrin Krenz’s (DE) robotic milling tools that crawl across tree trunks like parasites and engrave poems in encoded form into their bark. CyberArts’ spectrum is broad and diverse—it encompasses, not only a DIY home surgery system developed by Frank Kolkman (NL) but also “Exhausting a Crowd,” Kyle McDonald’s take on the subject of surveillance. The Prix Ars Electronica also honors the merits and pioneering achievements of important individuals in the history of media art. Prominent art critic and exhibition producer Jasia Reichardt immortalized herself in 1968 with a show entitled “Cybernetic Serendipity.” In recognition of this accomplishment, she’s the 2016 Visionary Pioneer of Media Art.
The Prix Ars Electronica is considered the world’s most important showcase of excellence in digital media art. Its 29-year history impressively documents how quickly the Digital Revolution has progressed during this time span. Hannes Leopoldseder had the idea of launching a generously sponsored, multidisciplinary computer art competition. It was launched in 1987 with judging in three categories. That number has since grown to seven: Computer Animation/Film/VFX, Digital Musics & Sound Art, Interactive Art+, Digital Communities, Hybrid Art, u19 – CREATE YOUR WORLD and—the latest addition—Visionary Pioneers of Media Art, whereby four of these categories—two groups of two—alternate on a biennial basis.
Among cultures throughout history, the representations of Hell, demons, and punishments are vast. In Inferno, the anxiety of the Singularity translates Hell and infinite punishment into a pseudo-model of infinite automation (rituals) and subordination to the machine.
Interactive, innovative and highly technically sophisticated–on September 8th, 2016, 5 PM, the OK in the Upper Austrian Cultural Quarter opens the CyberArts 2016 exhibition.
Fairy Lights in Femtoseconds is a 3-dimensional holograph that creates a dialogue between the physical and the immaterial, melting the border between matter and images.
Aurelia 1+Hz/proto viva sonification is an interactive performance that explores the phenomena of interspecies communication, sonification of the environment, and underwater acoustic/bioacoustics, using jellyfish.
The relationship between humans and nature seems to be out of balance. The human, a being defined by technology, is harming the environment on which its existence depends. In Parasitic/Symbiotic this tension between nature and technology is addressed.
Pathfinder is designed to initiate inspiration for choreography. The tool generates an algorithm that projects abstract shapes into space, creating a digital environment to stimulate dancers.
Rhizome by Boris Labbé, a film director and visual artist based in Madrid, is a complex animated film.
Jller is an apparatus that sorts pebbles from a specific river by geological age.
Three ceramic Ming-style vessels crafted from toxic mud from a barely liquid lake in Baotou, Inner Mongolia, continually pumped with tailings from rare earth refining process, stand for the amount of waste created in the production of three items of technology—a smartphone, a featherweight laptop, and the cell of a smart car battery.
Marble Machine is both an instrument and the song itself—the process of making is embedded within and is inseparable from the process of composition.
In einer unter ständiger Überwachung stehenden Gesellschaft, in der Regierungen ihre Macht missbrauchen und gegen menschliche Grundrechte verstoßen, wollen Aktionen wie Can you hear me? dazu einladen, diese Systeme herauszufordern und öffentlich unsere Meinungen zu sagen.
Hidden online markets exemplify how the Internet in general, and Darknets in particular, are helping to increasingly blur the lines of national legal dictates: What is legally produced and sold in one country is not necessarily even legal in another.
Based on your GPS location, the app shows a 360-degree visualization of the Infosphere, — the manmade ecosystem of wireless infrastructure around you.
Exhausting a Crowd was inspired by Georges Perec’s novel, An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris (Tentative d’epuisement d’un Lieu parisien), and automates the task of completely describing the events of 12 hours in a busy public space like Piccadilly Circus in London or in Amsterdam XX.
Throughout his career Mat Collishaw has created a series of zoetropes; a device dating back to the 1860s used to create the illusion of a moving image.
The large number of YouTube videos of mainly uninsured Americans performing and sharing medical hacks inspired Frank Kolkman to create OpenSurgery: A DIY surgical robot, which can be used to perform laparoscopic surgery
What began as a technological revolution has become our culture and our common reality. Visionary pioneers not only anticipate these changes with their work; they often decisively shape them and, in so doing, establish the foundation of media art as we know it today.
A bot (short for robot) is a computer program that can automatically perform certain repetitive tasks without having to rely on instructions from a human user. The SAZAE bot was just such a program.
Refugee Phrasebook is an open collaborative project that provides a collection of useful phrases, icons and links for refugees and their helpers to support them after their arrival in a new place.
This digital community, launched in 2005 by Michel Bauwens, is dedicated to advancing the social potential of peer-to-peer technologies.
Die Entscheidung [The Decision] is a computer game for two players who compete against one another at separate computers. Although competing, they have very different assignments to carry out and they don`t receive the same information.
Jennifer Lyn Morone highlights the human right to own personal data by turning herself into a corporation—Jennifer Lyn Morone™ Inc (founded in 2014). Her identity, physical & mental abilities, biological functions and data, are assets only she can exploit and potentially turn into profits.
