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3/9/2014

Ars Electronica 2014

Different venues, Linz

(Linz, August 28, 2014) This year’s Ars Electronica Festival is set for September 4-8 in Linz. The theme—C ... what it takes to change—places the focus on the global “ecosystem” of creativity and innovation to consider which framework conditions are necessary and what sort of protagonists are needed for essential changes to occur. Festivalgoers will also scrutinize the role that art can play in such transformation processes. As always, Ars Electronica is inviting artists and scientists from all over the world to gather in Linz and partake of a fascinating array of exhibitions, conferences, concerts, performances and interventions. Furthermore, Ars Electronica is using this change-oriented year as an occasion to try out a few interesting innovations in its own format. In this spirit, the festival is seeking new paths: channels that mobilize its dramatis personae and get festivalgoers going, that set their minds in motion and their bodies too!

Ars Electronica Goes Downtown
A conspicuous—almost defining—feature of this year’s get-together is that it’s taking leave of many traditional festival venues. Ars Electronica has never made such a concerted effort to stage as many events as possible in the public sphere. Exhibitions, presentations, open labs, concerts, speeches and entire conferences will be played out amidst Linz’s inner city—in concrete terms, a zone bounded by Landstraße, Spittelwiese, Herrenstraße and Promenade. Art is proliferating throughout downtown premises and infrastructure—sometimes presented subtly, sometimes impossible to overlook—and awaiting discovery by festivalgoers in shops, courtyards, gardens, underground garages, streets & squares, a college preparatory school’s gym, auditorium and classrooms, the lobby of a bank, and a cathedral together with its parish house and the bishop’s residence.

The Festival Hosts a Global Summit
High up on the list of this year’s important firsts is the premiere of a global summit (that also amalgamates numerous traditional festival elements and formats such as the theme symposium, the Pixelspaces conference, the Ars Electronica Futurelab’s Residency Network panel and the Artists Talks featuring the Prix Ars Electronica prizewinners). At this newly configured conclave, young innovators will be convening with established mentors and renowned experts in the fields of art & design, engineering, start-ups and social activism. Together, they’ll engage in discussions that transcend the boundaries of their respective communities to consider what sort of conditions and what kind of people are called for to enable creativity and innovation to make a tangible impact on our world.

Ars Electronica Festival
Since 1979, the Ars Electronica Festival has been confronting reciprocities at the interface of art, technology and society. Symposia, exhibitions, performances, interventions and concerts variously elaborate on a specific theme chosen each year on the basis of its importance and timeliness. A signature element of this gathering is the consistent effort to stage its annual discourse amidst the public sphere and with the general public. The jam-packed festival lineup features hundreds of artists, scientists and high-tech insiders from all over the world. It’s produced by Ars Electronica Linz GmbH, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the City of Linz, and co-produced by the ORF – Austrian Broadcasting Company’s Upper Austria Regional Studio, the Brucknerhaus concert hall and the OK Center for Contemporary Art.

The 2014 Festival Highlights

Opening Parcours & Opening Event
Thu, Sep 4 / 11 AM-11 PM / at nearly all festival locations
Festival website: Festival to go – Opening Parcours

The featured event on the festival’s first day is the opening parcours that kicks off at 11 AM at the Ars Electronica Center, finishes up with an extensive tour of St. Mary’s Cathedral (Mariendom) and, at 8:30 PM, is followed by the first evening’s highlight: the Festival’s spectacular opening event. First up at 11 AM is Hiroo Iwata, the initiator of Device Art and curator of the exhibition of the same name at the AEC (1 Upper Level). At 12 Noon, it’s time to head down to the Lobby and into Deep Space, where Maki Namekawa (piano), Emiko Ogawa (visuals) and Chiaki Ishikawa (composition) will premiere their audiovisual work entitled “Story Weaver.” After the performance, we cross the Danube to Hauptplatz (Main Square), where Linz Art University is hosting the Campus exhibition. Michel Cleempoel and François Zajéga, professors at this year’s guest institution, ARTS2 in Mons, Belgium, curated “Programmer ou être programmé” [Program or Be Programmed]. As always, Campus also features works by Linz undergrads. This year, to mark the 10 anniversary of the school’s Interface Cultures program, Christa Sommerer, Laurent Mignonneau, Martin Kaltenbrunner, Michaela Ortner and Reinhard Gupfinger have curated an especially extensive show in Raumschiff. Next stop on the opening parcours’ itinerary is the Radio Ö1 Container on the opposite end of Hauptplatz. At 3 PM, they’ll unfurl Umbrella Radio, a project developed jointly with Ars Electronica. At 3:45 PM, the u19 – CREATE YOUR WORLD festival for young people officially gets underway in the courtyard of the Akademisches Gymnasium. Right next door in the school’s classrooms and corridors at 4:15 PM, curators I-Wei Li and Pierre Bongiovanni welcome festivalgoers to the “Buddha on the Beach” exhibition. At 4:45 PM in an adjacent facility of the Akademisches Gymnasium, Ars Electronica Artistic Director Gerfried Stocker will open the Future Innovator Summit. The place to be at 5:30 PM is the Arkade shopping mall, the site of Change Gallery. Next stop is the OK Center for Contemporary Art for the 6 PM opening of CyberArts, the extensive exhibition curated by Genoveva Rückert and Christine Schöpf. At 7:30 PM, Peter Androsch and Anatol Bogendorfer host the premiere of “Sonotopia” in the courtyard of the Bischofshof. This brings the opening parcours into the home stretch, which means it’s time to gather at Mariendom. The official opening of the 2014 Ars Electronica Festival is set for 8:30 PM on the square in front of the Cathedral. The evening’s festivities include a guided tour through this impressive ecclesiastical space (9:30 PM) that’s now making its debut as an exhibition venue.

Future Innovators Summit

Thu, Sep 4 – Sun Sep 7 / 10 AM-9 PM daily / Akademisches Gymnasium, Sparkasse Oberösterreich Kundenzentrum
Promenade, Bischofshof, Central, paul’s greisslerei, Arkadenhof, OK Center for Contemporary Art
Festival website: Festival to think & talk – Future Innovators Summit

The Future Innovators Summit launched jointly by Ars Electronica, Hakuhodo and ITU Telecom is a conclave of extraordinary individuals from all over the world, experts in four fields that seldom convene at such a get-together—art & design, engineering, start-ups and social activism. This summit combines elements of the festival’s traditional theme symposium, the Pixelspaces conference, the panel discussion on the Ars Electronica Futurelab’s Residency Network, project presentations by Ars Electronica Solutions staffers and the Prix Ars Electronica artists’ talks. The outcome is a unique mix of lectures and keynotes, discussions and workshops, all of which are open to the public. Some of the Future Innovators Summit’s protagonists are young innovators from throughout the world who’ve already made a name for themselves with their artistic projects, start-ups, research activities or social initiatives. They’ll be interacting with facilitators from Hakuhodo and mentors who are renowned experts and decision-makers in a broad spectrum of fields, including photographer Oliviero Toscani (IT), DG-Connect CEO Robert Madelin (UK), Hiroshi Ishii (JP/US) of the MIT Media Lab, Joachim Sauter (DE) of Art+Com, and artist/scholar Golan Levin (US) of Carnegie Mellon University. Innovators and mentors will get to exchange views, provide feedback and put their projects up for discussion with assembled festivalgoers. The Future Innovators Summit commences of Thursday, September 4, 2014, and culminates at a wrap- up on Sunday, September 7, 2014 at 6 PM.

Featured Artists 2014: Shinseungback Kimyonghun

Thu, Sep 4 – Sun, Sep 7 / 10 AM-9 PM, Fri, Sep 5: 10 AM-11PM, Mon Sep 8: 10 AM-6 PM / Ars Electronica Center
Thu, Sep 4 – Mon, Sep 8 / 9:30 AM-7 PM / Arkade, Barschneiderei
Thu, Sep 4 – Mon, Sep 8 / 10 AM-9 PM / Akademisches Gymnasium
Festival website: Festival that shows – Featured Artists

Computer specialist Shin Seung Back and artist Kim Yong Hun have been working together since 2012. Their aim: gaining insight into the essence of digital life. The precondition: coming to terms with the essence of technology and of human beings. The Seoul-based duo’s artistic projects revolve around the differences between human and computer. They focus on, for instance, the rules according to which one perceives and interprets the surrounding world and how this comes across to the other. 10 works by Shinseungback Kimyonghun will be on exhibit at the festival.

CyberArts 2014

Thu, Sep 4 – Mon, Sep 8 / 10 AM-9 PM, Sat, Sep 6: 10 AM-11 PM / OK Center for Contemporary Art
Festival website: Festival that shows – CyberArts

The accent is definitely on innovation and change at this year’s festival; all the same, the CyberArts exhibition remains Ars Electronica’s centerpiece, the featured showcase of excellence in the media arts. It brings together the works singled out for recognition by the Prix Ars Electronica juries in the Interactive Art, Digital Communities, Computer Animation, [the next idea] voestalpine Art and Technology Grant and u19 – CREATE YOUR WORLD categories. For the first time, CyberArts is also spotlighting the brilliant work of one of the trailblazers of media art: Roy Ascott, the first Golden Nica recipient in the Visionary Pioneers of Media Art category launched this year. The CyberArts exhibition will be accompanied by chats with prizewinning artists on Saturday, September 6, 2014.

Prix Ars Electronica Gala

Fri, Sep 5 / 7 PM / Brucknerhaus (Main Hall)
Festival website: Festival to celebrate – Gala

The stars of this festive gala in the Brucknerhaus are the men and women being honored this year with the Prix Ars Electronica’s Golden Nica grand prizes. They’ll receive their statuettes in the presence of approximately 1,200 guests and many media outlet representatives from Austria and throughout the world.

ARTS2: Programmer ou être programmé

Thu, Sep 4 – Mon, Sep 8 / 11 AM-9 PM / Linz Art University
Festival website: Festival that shows – ARTS2

The Campus exhibition has become a fixture at Ars Electronica. It’s staged by Linz Art University’s Interface Cultures program, and features a foreign guest institution. This year, it’s ARTS2 – École supérieure des Arts in Mons, Belgium, the 2015 European Capital of Culture. The school provides training in the visual arts, music and theater. Its multidisciplinary structure makes it the ideal place for collaborative projects by students in different majors. High on the educational agenda is teaching students to use a wide variety of tools—computer programming in particular—and encouraging them to go their own way. The Department of Electroacoustic Music is the only one of its kind in Europe. An impression of the creative work being done by ARTS2 undergrads is provided by the Programmer ou être programmé exhibition that’s running during Ars Electronica in Linz.

10th Anniversary of Interface Cultures

Thu, Sep 4 – Mon, Sep 8 / 11 AM-9 PM / Hauptplatz, Raumschiff and Strafsachenstelle
Festival website: Festival that shows – Interface Cultures

Interactive art and innovative interfaces created at the nexus of art, design and research are the core elements of Linz Art University’s Interface Cultures program launched 10 years ago by Christa Sommerer (AT) and Laurent Mignonneau (FR). This anniversary is being celebrated in fitting fashion at this year’s Ars Electronica: the largest-ever Campus exhibition with 17 works by 40 students from 13 countries, Network Talks with professors from numerous partner universities in Europe, Asia, South America and Australia, and an alumni meeting.

Device Art

Thu, Sep 4 – Sun, Sep 7 / 10 AM-9 PM, Fri, Sep 5: 10 AM-11PM, Mon Sep 8: 10 AM-6 PM / Ars Electronica Center
Festival website: Festival that shows – Device Art

The Device Art exhibition spotlights exemplary objects that put a fun, playful exterior on a serious, high-performance core. Nevertheless, all the items on display are, at least potentially, suitable for use in everyday life, and some are already on retailers’ shelves. This relatively young art form was launched by a group centered on Hiroo Iwata (JP) at the University of Tsukuba in 2004. Since then, they’ve been pursuing the aim of using innovative materials and techniques to create high-tech contrivances featuring sophisticated, whimsical design. The respective mechanism specifies its theme; content and device are inseparably linked. Art, design, technology, science and entertainment blend in a unique way, and simultaneously dovetail modernity and ancient Japanese traditions. In addition to device art by Hiroo Iwata and other members of the Japanese group, the exhibition at the Ars Electronica Center includes works by artists at the University of California, Los Angeles’ ART|SCI Center, and at Kontejner, the Bureau of Contemporary Art Praxis in Zagreb, Croatia.

Buddha on the Beach

Thu, Sep 4 – Mon, Sep 8 / 10 AM-9 PM / Akademisches Gymnasium (further works can are on display at the LENTOS Art Museum, the Arkade and the St. Mary’s Cathedral)
Festival website: Festival that shows – Buddha on the Beach

In the face of the many current crises, we flee—sometimes just in our minds, sometimes literally, physically—increasingly often to idyllic tropical paradises far, far away. Assume that Buddha appeared today on one of these beaches. Would he have a solution to our problems? Or would he need a seaside vacation himself? In their “Buddha on the Beach” exhibition, curators I-Wei Li and Pierre Bongiovanni present three large-scale interactive installations, two live performances and 12 visual or video works that, despite their differences, all consider the question of how our future might turn out. “Buddha on the Beach” demonstrates the interrelationship between (Taiwanese) art and (global) crises.

The Big Concert Night: In a Perpetual State of Flux

Sun, Sep 7 / 6:30-11:10 PM / LENTOS Art Museum, Donaupark, Brucknerhaus
Festival website: Festival to watch & listen – Big Concert Night

Among numerous superb works of acoustic and visual artistry, the 2014 Big Concert Night’s lineup also includes three world premieres: Josef Klammer’s visualized solo concert “Trommeln ist ein dehnbarer Begriff” (7 PM / LENTOS Auditorium); Marco Lemke’s “Les Chimères” (8:25 PM / Brucknerhaus, Main Hall, performed by the Bruckner Orchester Linz conducted by Dennis Russell Davies); and Michael Nyman’s “Symphony No. 3 – Symphony of sexual songs” (9:25 PM / Brucknerhaus Concert Hall, performed by the Bruckner Orchester Linz conducted by Dennis Russell Davies). The point of departure of the Big Concert Night is, as always, the LENTOS Art Museum. From there, this musical excursion leads through Donaupark to the Brucknerhaus’ Main Hall.

The Story Weaver – The Crane Returns a Favor

Thu, Sep 4 – Fri, Sep 5 / 12 noon, Sat, Sep 6 / 6 PM, Sun, Sep 7 / 3 PM, Mon, Sep 8 / 4 PM / Ars Electronica Center, Deep Space
Festival website: Festival to watch & listen – Story Weaver

The beauty of nature as well as the threat it poses have exerted a great influence on Japanese society and culture since time immemorial. This is made evident by numerous myths and fairy tales, one of which is “The Crane Returns a Favor.” Making this narrative accessible to the general public and, particularly, non-Japanese audiences has been a goal long pursued by Maki Namekawa, Chiaki Ishikawa and Emiko Ogawa, three Japanese artists who have been living and working in Linz for many years. To bring this to fruition now, they’re taking advantage of the great technical infrastructure in Deep Space at the Ars Electronica Center. Maki Namekawa will be performing on a Bösendorfer concert grand piano that’s linked to a computer via a musical instrument digital interface (Midi), which, in turn, projects the visuals designed by Emiko Ogawa in real time onto Deep Space’s walls and floor. Chiaki Ishikawa composed the music.

Dom Exhibit

Thu, Sep 4 / 9 AM-5:30 PM and 7 PM-11 PM, Fri, Sep 5 / 9 AM-5 PM and 7 PM-11 PM, Sat, Sep 6 / 9 AM-4 PM and 7 PM-11 PM, Sun, Sep 7 / 1 PM-3:30 PM, Mon, Sep 8 / 11:30 AM-5:30 PM / Mary’s Cathedral
Festival website: Festival that shows – Dom Exhibit

Linz’s St. Mary’s Cathedral has been the site of sound installations & performances staged in conjunction with the last two festivals. In 2012, Sam Auinger’s artistry reverberated through this extraordinary acoustic setting; he was followed in 2013 by Rupert Huber. This year, the Diocese of Linz and Ars Electronica are going a step further and employing this one-of-a-kind setting as an exhibition space throughout the festival. Festivalgoers will be able to experience a total of X artistic installations in the church’s nave, crypt and Rudigiersaal: “5 robots named Paul” by Paul Tresset (FR/UK), “Flying Records” by Ei Wada (JP), “Momentrium #1, 2, 3” by h.o (JP), “Netykavka” by Dan Gregor (CZ), “Saccade Based Display” by Junji Watanabe (JP) & Hide yuki Ando (JP), “Machinefabriek” by Rutger Zuydervelt (NL), “tour en l’air” by Ursula Neugebauer (DE), “Mirage” by GRINDER-MAN (JP), “Long Live” by Jui-Chung Yao (TW) and “Three States of the World” by Chih-Ming Lin (TW).

u19 – CREATE YOUR WORLD

Thu, Sep 4 – Mon, Sep 8 / 10 AM-7 PM / Akademisches Gymnasium (courtyard)
Festival website: Festival to play – u19 – CREATE YOUR WORLD

With a total of 45 installations, exhibitions, presentations, workshops and open labs, the u19 – CREATE YOUR WORLD festival for young people is once again a colorful playground for ideas, solutions, concepts and experiments. As diverse as these features and activities are, they are nevertheless part of a single endeavor: envisioning how the world of tomorrow might be ... and how it should be. And thus, what we have to change in order to arrive at that desirable destination. Here, all are invited to bring in opinions, visions and concrete plans, and get busy developing, rendering, building, tinkering, designing, programming and filming. And all of this amidst inspiring exchange with the many artists and scientists from around the world who’ve come to Linz to participate in Ars Electronica. This time around, there are especially rich offerings for up-and-coming young filmmakers—animation with experts from Linz Art University; recording a professional soundtrack at a workshop with Jacques van de Veerdonk; or creating something called a “user-generated animated sculpture” together with Christoph Einfalt, Valentin Ordner and Remo Rauscher of the Backlab Collective. Plus, there’s a Film.Lab that focuses on state-of-the-art equipment and how to use it like a pro. It all takes place in the courtyard of the Akademisches Gymnasium.

The 2014 Ars Electronica Theme: C ... what it takes to change

This year’s festival theme is “C ... what it takes to change,” an intense consideration of which prerequisites and framework conditions have to be in place for social innovation and renewal to emerge and proliferate. Occupying the focal point is the concept of art as catalyst. Here, a formal statement of the theme by Festival curators Christine Schöpf and Gerfried Stocker: Knowledge, creativity, ideas: the raw materials of the future. Yeah, OK, granted! This undeniable insight has been making the rounds for quite a while now, and opinion leaders in politics and business are only too eager to hop on the bandwagon. Everyone’s for creativity, everybody calls for a better trained staff, and all want to profit from new ideas. So far, so good! But who’s prepared to contribute to this? Who understands that these raw materials don’t have to be depleted, they have to be maximized; that they can’t be harvested, they can only be invested? Only when we grasp the workings of the ecosystem of creativity and innovation, when we respect it and provide it with sufficient nourishment, only then can we hope to profit from it.

Creativity and innovation don’t just appear out of the blue, and they resist being conjured up, no matter how clever the design thinking and strategic innovation management methods implemented to bring them forth. Interdisciplinarity can’t mean that lots of people share the same pie and everybody gets a slice; rather, that together they bake a cake into which everyone has input a piece. Common knowledge? Of course it is! But then again, maybe you need to spend some time chatting with CEOs, R&D execs, marketing directors, cultural managers and policymakers.

So then, what is this going to take and what do we have to do? What’s actually more important: trying some new approaches or heading off in a completely new direction? Open spaces, settings for encounter and exchange, surprises and inspirations, the experience of making, designing and developing things on one’s own, the courage to fail, the fun of sharing one’s own ideas with others. Artists, scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, leading-edge thinkers, imitators and tweakers, mavericks and team players, malcontents and co-conspirators, tinkerers and dreamers, all of us ...

... or is it just an illusion to even think we can change the shape of things to come? The C in the title of Ars Electronica 2014 stands for confidence and for the craving for change, but also for creativity, for collaboration and for catalysts. When the aim is to initiate a chemical reaction, energy has to be added to the equation. But sometimes that’s not enough and what’s additionally called for is a catalyst, a material that makes it easier for the elements that are supposed to interact to engage one another and launch something new. To put this in concrete terms: a catalyst reduces the amount of free energy necessary for a reaction to occur without itself being consumed in the process.

And come to think of it, isn’t this a terrific description of the impact that art can bring to bear on social transformation and renewal projects? Artists as catalysts—a concept that’s worth considering more thoroughly.

2014 Catalogs
Accredited media outlet representatives are entitled to purchase this year’s Festival and CyberArts catalogs for €15 each (regularly €28.80). During the festival, catalogs can be obtained at the Festival Ticket Counter in the Sparkasse’s Promenade customer service center (accessible via the Arkade shopping mall) and at the Ars Electronica Center box office.

Image: Touchy / Eric Siu (HK). Credit: Eric Siu

Contact

Christopher Sonnleitner
christopher.sonnleitner@aec.at
+43/(0)732-7272-38

Robert Bauernhansl
robert.bauernhansl@aec.at
+43/(0)732-7272-32

The 2014 Festival Locations
Ars Electronica has never made such a concerted effort to stage as many events as possible in the public sphere. Most of the Festival will be played out amidst Linz’s inner city—in concrete terms, a zone bounded by Landstraße, the Promenade, Herrenstraße and Spittelwiese. The primary venues are St. Mary’s Cathedral (Mariendom), the Akademisches Gymnasium (college preparatory school), the Arkade shopping mall and OK Center for Contemporary Art.

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