Exhibitions, Projects

The finest in media art. The most important exhibition at every festival is the CyberArts show at the OK Center for Contemporary Art featuring works submitted from all over the world for Prix Ars Electronica prize consideration and singled out for recognition by this year’s juries. This is a comprehensive showcase of excellence and leading indicator of what’s happening in digital art. The theme exhibitions at POSTCITY bring together a wide array of artistic approaches designed to open up diverse perspectives from which to consider this year’s festival theme. The Ars Electronica Center (with extended opening hours throughout the Festival) hosts multiple exhibitions. Linz Art University’s annual Campus show spotlighting outstanding work being done at a selected guest university rounds out the lineup of exhibitions running during the Festival.

Theme Exhibitions ERROR - The Art of Imperfection

Error stems from the Latin word errō and does not only mean to be wrong but also to wander about. Wandering about – and wondering – seems to be a fitting mode when visiting a festival for art, technology and society that approaches such a multifaceted term as error.

Error in Progress

The Error in Progress exhibition includes art and technology projects that are primarily means of artistic expression and that predominate in the large exhibition parcours arrayed in the spectacular spaces of the Lower Levels at POSTCITY.

Error, Fake & Failure

The Error, Fake & Failure exhibition deals with Art and Technology projects motivated primarily by research and exploration.

CyberArts

Experience digital arts! CyberArts presents the most outstanding entries from the Prix Ars Electronica, the international competition of computer art now in its 20th year, at the OK Center of Contemporary Art.

Gallery Spaces

Since its successful launch last year, the Gallery Spaces Program, deliberately written in the plural, has brought a large number of international galleries and collections with their different positions on digital art to the Ars Electronica Festival.

STARTS Exhibition
STARTS Prize, STARTS Residencies, WEAR Sustain

The S+T+ARTS = STARTS initiative is a program of the European Commission launched in 2016 to encourage synergies between the arts and technology to support innovation in industry and society.

The Practice of Art & Science

The rapprochement, as it were, of art and science, the artistic exploration of new applications, is a key factor in the increasingly social dimension of new technologies in order to comprehend how reciprocal human-machine relationships, interactions among individuals and globally networked systems can not only be better understood but, above all, better designed.

Himatsubushi Trail - The Art of Time-Killing
Himatsubushi Research Team (JP)

For the first time the Ars Electronica Festival is climbing the heights of the roof of POSTCITY. Remote locations directly under the roof of the postal machine offer exciting views and insights. Himatsubushi promises time to stroll, discover and waste time.

Deep Space 8K

The Ars Electronica Center offers its visitors something that can not be found anywhere else in the world: 16 x 9 meters of wall and another 16 x 9 meters of floor projection, laser tracking and 3-D-animations make the Deep Space 8K something very special indeed.

Campus Exhibition

Twenty-four universities from all over the world will be using the 2018 Ars Electronica Festival to showcase the results of their educational programs at the interface of art and technology.

Campus Exhibition: Please Recharge
University of Art and Design, Linz, Interface Cultures (AT)

We live in times of information overload and permanent availability. The convenience of being connected anywhere and anytime is ultimately not compatible with the physical and mental capacity of our bodies. They do need breaks and we do need time.

Reality Redrawn Challenge
Mozilla (US), The Tech Museum of Innovation (US)

The Reality Redrawn Challenge, launched by Mozilla, is intended to tackle the current topic of misinformation with the help of mixed reality and other art media.

Sparkasse OÖ Visualisierte Klangwolke 2018: PAX tradition = revolution

The Danube Park and the river itself become the setting for a unique staging of human history, from the Big Bang to the present.

Dazwischen. Occurrences in Linz from 1918 to 1938 - an audio exhibition
Kulturdirektion Linz, Archiv der Stadt Linz, Walter Kohl (AT), theater@work, Ars Electronica Solutions (AT)

The Linz Cultural Directorate, the Linz City Archive and Ars Electronica Solutions create an extraordinary audio world that conveys life, social and economic circumstances, and the political situation in Linz between two world wars.

Chilean Group Show

This year, for the very first time, Ars Electronica Linz in collaboration with international institutions, ministries, artists and scientists asked social activists from Chile or with a Chilean background to participate in this year’s Festival.

EMAP (European Media Art Platform) Group Exhibition

EMAP (European Media Art Platform) annually awards production grants to outstanding European media artists and supports research, production, presentation and distribution of media art in Europe and beyond.

The 4D Box - a holographic live stage
The Culture Yard (DK), Very Mainstream Studio & Very Theatre (TW), Noora Hannula & The Nordic Beasts (DK/FI), Carl Emil Carlsen (DK), Bjørn Svin (DK)

The 4D Box is a multimedia digital live stage and includes hologram technology, advanced sound and live performance in a single expression.

Fashion & Technology
University of Art and Design, Linz

The program is governed by an integrative philosophy. Technology and fashion don’t just encounter one another.

Open Futurelab

As in past years, the „Open Futurelab“ means a stage within the festival, where projects and project partners of the Ars Electronica Futurelab are presented.

netidee
netidee (AT)

netidee is Austria's largest open source internet promotion campaign.

Campus Exhibition: Taking Care
Hexagram (CA)

Taking Care is an exhibition of twenty works from student members of Hexagram, an interdisciplinary research network for media arts, design, technology and digital culture based in Montreal (Quebec), Canada.

Featured Artist 2018: Hidden Alliances - Elisabeth Schimana and the IMAfiction series
Elisabeth Schimana (AT)

In the exhibition entitled Hidden Alliances, 10 female artists, pioneers of their time, tell rather a different story and together weave a fascinating network of interrelationships.

LightTank
Uwe Rieger (DE/NZ), Yinan Liu (NZ) (arc/sec Lab)

LightTank is a mixed-reality installation that augments a space frame structure with holographic line drawings.

Space Art

People are already envisioning space as a travel destination for civilians or even as a human living environment. Why shouldn’t we start establishing a cultural and artistic discourse about it right now?

VRLab

Virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality, total immersion in virtual worlds and superimposing data onto our reality. The VRLab in the Ars Electronica Center’s Main Gallery showcases the latest VR, AR and MR technologies.

Bugfix the Brain
g.tec medical engineering GmbH (AT)

Bugfix the Brain focuses on patients who suffer from motor disabilities due to stroke or disorders of consciousness and shows state-of-the-art rehabilitation and assessment tools based on Brain-Computer Interfaces.

Concept Fire Truck
Rosenbauer (AT)

What impact will digitization, urbanization, demographic shifts, autonomous mobility and other current trends have on firefighting? What will firefighting technology be called upon to do in the years to come? An initial response to these questions is provided by Rosenbauer’s Concept Fire Truck, a trailblazer in the truest sense of the word.

The 4D Box: Silicium
The Culture Yard (DK), Carl Emil Carlsen (DK), Bjørn Svin (DK)

The 4D Box is a multimedia digital live stage and includes hologram technology, advanced sound and live performance in a single expression.

The 4D Box: The Ultimate Battle
The Culture Yard (DK), Noora Hannula & The Nordic Beasts (DK/FI)

The 4D Box is a multimedia digital live stage and includes hologram technology, advanced sound and live performance in a single expression.

The 4D Box: Chronicle of Light Year
The Culture Yard (DK), Very Mainstream Studio & Very Theatre (TW)

The 4D Box is a multimedia digital live stage and includes hologram technology, advanced sound and live performance in a single expression.

FIS Lounge

On the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the Future Innovators Summit workshop, in the FIS Lounge the festival visitors can learn more details about the workshop itself.