Credit: Tom Mesic
Every day experts offer their knowledge and insights on another aspect of the festival: These go into and beyond the theme Artificial Intelligence – The Other I and discuss current questions of art, science and society and also find unexpected paths through POSTCITY. The Expert Tours take place at POSTCITY if no other venue is indicated.
Students of the course of studies in Art and Multimedia at LMU Munich, will take you through their exhibition Sense of Space, Sense of Room. They present their projects, explain how they came into being and talk about the background of the works. They also answer your questions on their projects!
Four students of the Empowerment Informatics Program at the University of Tsukuba in Japan will introduce a series of projects that reflect the international and interdisciplinary environment in which they have been developed. Each student will present the concepts, backgrounds, and goals of their projects. A great opportunity to discuss the relations between art, technology and society from the point of view of the the three pillars of Empowerment Informatics: harmonization, supplementation and extension of human capabilities.
The Sound Art Parcour of Music Monday is an Ars Electronica tradition of long standing. The tour kicks off at Anton Bruckner Private University, the focus is on the Ars Electronica Festival’s projects that have to do with sound. The defining characteristic is that this is actually a music education program designed to mediate the general public’s encounters with musical art.
For her performance Whose Scalpel, Yen Tzu Chang recorded her own heart data with the help of a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner. We are going to switch to the live stream of the MRI laboratory, where the researchers will give us detailed insights into the functions of the MRI scanner, and we can immediately ask questions and scan real pieces of fruit.
There is no artificial intelligence without natural intelligence! Are human beings the sole owners of intelligence? The Expert Tour “Botanical Intelligence” poses the exciting question: Where are the limits of our knowledge? And what has this to do with our environment and our perception? We focus on plants, the actual rulers of this world. The range of topics we touch in this guided tour ranges from biodiversity to botanical sensory life to plant sex.
Gene Kogan will introduce the field of machine learning and its existing and speculative implications to new media and art in general. He will discuss applications of neural networks and associated algorithms to producing images, sounds, and texts, showing examples of contemporary works using these abilities. Gene Kogan will also present two of his own works intersecting machine learning and generative art.
The media artist Refik Anadol employs machine-learning algorithms. For his immersive media installation Archive Dreaming he searched and sorted relations among 1,700,000 documents. Refik Anadol will focus his tour on AI based artworks. Join the experience to get in touch with a great artist who displays two installations at this year’s Ars Electronica Festival.
Media artist and composer Se-Lien Chuang and professor Andreas Weixler, director of the Computer Music Studio (CMS), give exciting insights into the Sonic Lab & the Computer Music Studio (CMS) at Anton Bruckner Private University. After a short tour follows an introduction into the functionality of the multichannel intermedia computer music concert hall.
The Expanded Body Expert Tour highlights works that are dealing with the topic of transformation of the human body. We will have a closer look at art works dealing with artificial extensions, simulations and mutation processes as well as enhancements of the human body that will challenge “The Other I”.
Chico MacMurtrie is well known for his large-size robotic sculptures. For the Landesgartenschau in Kremsmünster (Garden Show of the State of Upper Austria) Chico MacMurtrie created Pneuma Fountain, a 4-meter-tall, 16-meter-wide inflatable robotic sculpture which is placed right in the middle of the Kremsmünster Monastery’s baroque courtyard. The tour consists of a presentation from the artist himself.
With the Ars Electronica Gallery Spaces Ars Electronica created an entirely new and innovative format. Christophe de Jaeger, co-initiator of the initiative, guide through the gallery spaces.
Explore the artworks and projects on show at POSTCITY that raise complex ethical issues about developments in science and technology, either in their use of materials or subject matter. Artist Anna Dumitriu will also introduce her own project Controlled Commodity which explores antibiotic resistance and CRISPR gene editing.
The Linz artist’s collective Time’s Up, this year’s Featured Artist, transforms the spaces of the LENTOS Kunstmuseum into an interactive situation, in Turnton Docklands. We write the year 2047. The space itself becomes the exhibition, which wants to be touched, searched and worked out. Turnton Docklands offers a mixture of environmental dystrophy, corporate ideals and a scary future scenario.
Star Storm is a spectacular, site-specific explosive performance inspired by the processes of the stars. Using research from the European Space Agency on the composition, life cycle, magnetic behavior and light production within stars, including our sun, Aoife van Linden Tol has designed a powerful and beautifully poetic experience.
