Credit:Patricia Cadavid

# 12OCT

Patricia Cadavid H.

#12OCT reflects about certain aspects of the past and present of Ibero-American colonial panorama.

The paradigmatic date of October 12 reminds us that in 1492, Christopher Columbus arrived to America for the first time.
The Spanish state officially celebrates the beginning of the colonization of America as the day of national holiday or Hispanicity Day, by holding a sumptuous military parade. In the colonized countries of Latin America this date is known among other names, as Day of the Race or Day of Indigenous Resistance.

This interactive installation makes a critical approach of the controversy of these different connotations, with the use of simple and open devices to the public, using social networks like a collective thinking sensor on both sides of the Atlantic.
It utilizes data visualization as a physical form with a representation of a world map provided in a container with water and three ships of proportional size symbolizing the caravels led by Christopher Columbus.

Two engines direct the flow of the water from a continent to the other, depending on the reading of the real-time data that are generated with the search of specific hashtags on twitter.

Credit: Nathan Guo

Alibi

Nathan Yao Guo, Muchen Zhang

Alibi is a speculative and interactive installation that creates an astronaut suit for a fish, giving it the ability to move around by taking advantage of robotic arm. Inspired by “Becoming Animal” by Deleuze and the approach of critical design, this project proposes an ecosystem and biosphere for animals. It provides a high-tech scenario and the right to explore the “outer-space” for animals, meanwhile giving people a vigilant and reflective contemplation.

Credit:Gabriela Gordillo

Arrhythmia

Gabriela Gordillo

Arrhythmia is a sound installation of an ongoing composition made out of rhythms of everyday life. Visitors are able to set different loops, according to the duration of daily activities in a time-frame of 24 hours. The data is transformed into an audible sequence, that makes possible to observe these patterns, mix them, and relate them to others. Arrhythmia, questions the subjectivity behind routine and repetition, through regarding the multiplicity of the uses of time, and the appropriations of personal rhythms that coexist with the ones imposed.

Credit: Nadal Escudero

BitterCoin

Martín Nadal, Cesar Escudero Andaluz

Bittercoin is an old calculating machine hacked to be used as a miner validating the pending bitcoins transactions in the blockchain (online distributed database). BitterCoin combines the Internet of Things, media archaeology and economy. The operations are displayed on the calculator screen and printed afterwards.

The bitcoin was originally conceived as an electronic decentralized system for capital transactions. Each node (user) had the same opportunities to get a reward when validating a transaction.

In the last years this system has triggered a competitive struggle in which computing power is the most important variable for earning bitcoins. This involves the use of large equipment, computer farms requiring physical and environmental resources. A struggle that benefits only the owner of the most powerful and efficient technology. BitterCoin takes up this discourse in a rhetorical way. It works as the most basic computer, increasing the time needed to produce bitcoins to almost an eternity.

Credit: Chiara Esposito

Domes

Chiara Esposito

The Domes are sound sculptures made out of ceramic. Their metallic glaze, a traditional decoration technique, works as a sensing element. The sculpture senses the touch of the visitor and reacts by resonating.

Ceramic artists: Rita Lonardo, Renato Brancaccio

Thanks to Svenja Keune, Massimo Scamarcio, Marialuisa Capurso

Credit: Julia Nüßlein, Irene Ródenas

Green Filter

Julia Nüßlein, Irene Ródenas Sáinz de Baranda

With the speculative design project Green Filter, the artists Irene Ródenas and Julia Nüßlein propose a symbiosis between humans and nature.
The visitor is invited to imagine we’d be using nature’s elaborate ways to filter the air that we breathe, instead of causing polluted air and ecological imbalance by exploiting the earth for plastic and oil. Imagine plants being part of our every move, and every human having a pet plant.

Green Filter consists of wearable objects made from plants and natural materials that filter the air we breath. The objects challenge habits and assumptions, and encourage critical thinking about our position on planet Earth.

Credit: Jens Vetter

Homo Restis

Jens Vetter, Sarah Leimcke

Homo Restis, a performance-live-sonic-installation, could be seen as another fruit in a long term collaborative exchange between the musician Jens Vetter and visual artist Sarah Leimcke. The potent medieval-futurism of the images invoked in this happening enter the mind of the viewer and stay there, imprinted. Themes of weight, detail, passivity, activity, and the macabre swirl and augment each other to produce a quality of “theatre” which is both accessible and occult. Homo Restis engages with the evident environment and abstract space through the presence of both Vetter and Leimcke. Both appear as “men on strings“,  marionettes, as the Latin term ”restis”. They attach themselves to the environment and to each other. This moments of “getting attached” is transformed as sound. We can ask ourselves: how can material of this fantasy be a catalyst for solid exploration?

Credit: Amaia Vincente Garcia

Is Europe a Utopia?

Amaia Vicente García

This interactive installation shows a European flag which is hanging from the ceiling.

The spectator can move around the artwork. By doing so he/she provokes constant changes on the installation. The fabric moves, sound appears, also depending upon how many people are around. The air of fans move the flag. It opens, closes and shakes in order to create an air sculpture. It is possible to have a look inside the empty sculptural space.
The sounds are voices from different women who are reading facsimiles of European constitution extracts focused on diversity, equal and gender opportunity.
The voices sometimes overlap and therefore cannot be understood very clear all the time. This and the air fans produce a sound mess which is a metaphor of this European utopia.

Credit: Or Wollf

MusiCalendar

Or Wollf

This installation deals with the combination of the digital and the analog world from the output of personal data.

The project includes a digital interface that takes personal characteristics and creates an individual calendar. These data are used as points on a paper strip of a music box that will be translated to a melody and visuals.

The combination of digital and analog brings a new way for perceiving and understanding everyday interfaces such as a calendar. Personal data of anyone receives a new interpretation for lifestyle, schedule, events and the outcome based on different data will change from one person to another.

Credit: Oliver Lehner

Shopping Mill

Oliver Lehner

Shopping Mill is an interactive, multi-sensory installation: a treadmill augmented with display and headphones. Walking on the mill simulates a shopping experience with Muzak playback and an endlessly unfolding, 3D-generated shopping aisle. Shopping Mill is a meditation on the relationship between de-realized labor and senseless consumption. A trip into the military entertainment complex. Muzak – the company – was founded by a highly decorated war veteran. Its product was not only developed to make people feel comfortable in uncomfortable architectures, but also to heighten attentiveness and productivity in the work place.
Is it the music that keeps you going or is it the other way around?

Credit: Johannes Wernicke

Sonolith

Johannes Wernicke

The installation consists of a seemingly solid monolith/cuboid hanging from the ceiling. It looks like it floats. When the visitors inspect it from a nearer distance odd wave-like movements can be seen emerging on its surface. The material seems to change its gaseous state, starting to seem rather soft or even appearing liquid.

Credit: Qian Xu

Suan

Qian Xu

Suan (chinese: to calculate) is an installation projecting fractal patterns and animations based on parameter input from an abacus.

The visitors participate by playing with the abacus. A hidden camera captures the numbers, which the participants enter on the abacus. These numbers will be used as different parameters to generate different fractal Images.
The work shows the charm of mathematics from a different approach. Filled with cultural and artistic inspirations, it is also accessible to people from different age ranges, education levels and nationalities. One does not need to know exactly what’s going on with the complex calculation to enjoy the beauty of mathematics.

10AM-11AM   SESSION 1:  EUROPEAN DIGITAL ART AND SCIENCE NETWORK

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 ESA, 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.

Schedule

Moderation: Jurij Krpan (SI)

11:20AM – 12:30PM SESSION 2: ESTABLISHING BEST PRACTICE

The huge current interest in forms of interdisciplinary collaboration shines on, what for many people is a long-overdue spotlight on the multifarious possibilities that can emerge from exchange and cooperation: on one hand art and creativity and on the other, science and technology. Moreover, an increasing number of observers are applauding the fact that, above all, there is finally widespread realization of a paradigm shift having occurred in a world that is now globalized not only geographically and economically but intellectually as well.

The private sector too is progressively seeking new ways and means and has come to regard artistic creativity as an important resource that can lead to competitive innovations. Of course, such efforts to maximize art’s practical benefits have to be approached very cautiously to avoid being one-sided, and the expectations associated with them need practiced moderation.

Schedule

Moderation: Yamina Aouina (DZ/DE)

1:30PM – 3:10PM  SESSION 3: EXPLORING NEW FRONTIERS 

When we consider the history of new media technology and art, the concept of the lab has played a significant role as a symbol expressing the experimental nature of media art and as a provider of infrastructure and expertise for these cutting-edge developments. Ever since the MIT Media Lab was founded in 1985 or in the early years of Art+Com in Berlin (1988), the expression “lab” has also become synonymous with the encounters and exchanges between art and creativity on one hand and engineering and science on the other. The 1990s saw the propagation of this idea beyond universities and corporate R&D departments; artist-run labs like x-space in Graz (1990) and the Ars Electronica Futurelab (1995) were among these early adopters.

Nowadays, “lab” is a fashionable yet also inflationary term being used for almost anything that aims to be cool and experimental—for instance, fashion labs, food labs, beauty labs and inspiration labs. And, of course, in the age of ubiquitous technology, there are pop-up labs in kitchens, living rooms and garages of all sorts. The Speakers in the third part of the Symposium discuss the future of the “Laboratory” in Art, Science and its intersections.

Ghalia Elsrakbi (NL/SY) & Haytham Nawar (EG) speak on the bridging of audiences and professionals through art at Cairotronica, while Mohamed Hossam (EG) & Omar El-Safty (EG) share their experience on establishing Fablab Egypt and the Maker community in the region. Christian Rauch (DE) Berlin State Festival reflects on festival curation; creating an open meeting ground for science and the public, in a similar vein Ali Panahi (IR) & Ehsan Rasoulof (IR) TADAEX highlight the emergence of collaborations between artistic & scientific streams in Tehran, before Oscar Ekponimo (NG) Chowberry & Elizabeth Kasujja (UG) InstaHealth, discuss ‘Digital Communities’: translating body sound to language and the transformative power of mobile phones on the health sector, respectively. Valentino Catricalà (IT) BNL Media Art Festival artistic director, will provide insight on innovating Media Art through education, Michela Magas (UK/SE/HR) will be discussing the transdisciplinary laboratory and Mariano Sardón (AR) Laboratory – Museum Space: an effective interaction place for Artists and Scientists at the Museo de la Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero.

Schedule

Moderation: Washio Kazuhiko (JP)

3:30PM-4:30PM    SESSION 4: DISCUSSING THE FUTURE OF THE LABS

The laboratory: as an academic research facility, as an independent proving ground, as a driving force of innovation; the laboratory as a bridge between research and business, between art and science; the laboratory as a hacker space, as a festival. The extraordinary diversity of the settings at which creative R&D is now taking place has been made patently clear by the presentations that have preceded this session. On the basis of these facts & circumstances, a panel of international experts now asks what the lab of the future just might look like, where it could well be located, and what framework conditions are necessary to do future-oriented R&D.

Schedule

Moderation: Yamina Aouina (DZ/DE)

This event is realised in the framework of the European Digital Art and Science Network and co-funded by the Creative Europe program of the European Union.