Whether for children, the young-at-heart, grandparents or parents, accompanying persons of all kinds or teenagers, the Ars Electronica Festival 2019 offers exciting projects, ideas and events for visitors of all ages. To help you find your way through the jungle of objects, we have the best festival tips for families for you.
The first place for families to get an insight into the Ars Electronica world is the new Ars Electronica Center. There, exciting projects such as the SEER robot or Animaker as part of the Kids’ Research Laboratory await the young visitors. Special Family Tours are also tailored to the needs of families with children.
Another highlight of the festival can also be seen in the center, more precisely in Deep Space 8K:
For more than ten years, house facades and stage sets all over the world have been illuminating with spontaneous images that are painted and animated live. Responsible for this are members of the Tagtool community united by an alternative vision of digital art. They work on the street or in the theatre instead of in front of the screen, jam like jazz musicians, and search for new forms of visual expression.
During the Ars Electronica Festival 2019, an interactive production by selected artists will be presented at Deep Space 8k. The installation is the result of a recent residency of Tagtool artists from around the world. Together they will create an impressive work of art specifically for the Deep Space, with many details and everything in constant motion. The audience can also take part in the design on site.
Let’s get to the centre of the festival, the POSTCITY. There’s a festival there that’s dedicated to young researchers and the young at heart: CREATE YOUR WORLD, The Future Festival of the Next Generation, is this time looking into the question of who actually decides what our future looks like? CREATE YOUR WORLD is a centre for creative projects, a playground for quirky ideas, a laboratory for exciting experiments and a forum for constructive protest. As a kind of festival within the festival, it offers free space for artists, inventors, lateral thinkers, those thirsting for knowledge, future enthusiasts and activists who want to exchange ideas with others and like-minded people, try out new technologies and forge joint plans. The motto: Come, be inspired, join in! The mission: Get involved and help shape the future!
Within the CREATE YOUR WORLD Festival there are projects such as the BrainLab, which offers insights into the activities of a young brain. Or the FabLab, a textile research laboratory in which non-digital work processes are to be conveyed in an open workshop format. For older children, we would particularly like to highlight the SIA project, which trains young people as social agents in cooperation with the Landestheater Linz.
For those who don’t just want to spend time with their family within the CREATE YOUR WORLD Festival in POSTCITY, but don’t really know how to filter out the child-friendly objects amongst the wealth of projects, there is of course support: A special WE GUIDE YOU Kids Tour is tailored to the needs of young visitors between 8 and 14 years of age.
All the research, trying out and playing is exhausting and the day is long. That is why we would like to invite you to visit the BIO AUSTRIA farmer’s market on the Saturday of the festival, which delights young and old alike. Tastings of organic farmers from the region can be enjoyed on site or taken home.
And last but not least, a completely obvious tip when you’ve already been to POSTCITY: the old post slides are too tempting not to take the opportunity to slide down. You can do that easily in the CREATE YOUR WORLD area at Slide Again and Again! or from the ARS on the WIRE exhibition on the upper floor of POSTCITY down to the First Floor.
This wasn’t enough and you are looking for more events and exhibitions? You can find the whole program on our website.
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