Day 1: The festival has started!

Radical Atoms Postcity Festival Day One Recap
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Linz is covered in fog, the city has yet to wake up: It is Thursday morning. POSCITY is still quiet, only the occasional sounds of the nearby train station break the silence every now and then. But not for long, since Thursday is the first day of the 2016 festival.

Here, you can see the first day in pictures.

RADICAL ATOMS Day One Festival Visitors

Credit: Florian Voggeneder

Slowly, there is movement around POSTCITY – visitors are arriving at the festival location. At 10AM, there is a queue at the Welcome Desk: The festival can start.

POSTCITY RADICAL ATOMS Day One Festival Ars Electronica

Credit: Florian Voggeneder

Gerfried Stocker, Artistic Director at Ars Electronica, opens the Festival with a tour through POSTCITY, showing some of the many works of media art that are on display.

RADICAL ATOMS Festival POSTCITY Day One

Credit: Florian Voggeneder

One of them is “Sculpture Factory” by Davide Quayola – the impressive industrial robot carves out replicas of Michelangelo’s sculptures, en masse.

Day One RADICAL ATOMS Festival Alchemists POSTCITY

Credit: Florian Voggeneder

Quayola’s robot is in good company. Among the many machines at the festival, there is also this little orange one, which takes pictures of visitors in extremely high quality.

RADICAL ATOMS POSTCITY Festival Day One

Credit: Florian Voggeneder

POSTCITY is hosting media art from top to bottom – deep below the surface, in the old nuclear bunker, you can find “Rotating Lights” by Stefan Tiefengraber.

RADICAL ATOMS Day One POSTCITY Festival

Credit: Tom Mesic

A little higher, visitors are exploring the u19 exhibition – here, the award-winning works of the children and youth category of renowned Prix Ars Electronica are on show.

Day One RADICAL ATOMS Festival POSTCITY Alchemists

Credit: Tom Mesic

A reason to smile: at this year’s Ars Electronica Festival, you can try out Virtual Reality glasses. “Das Erkenntnisspiel” lets visitors discover this new technology in a playful way.

Day One Festival POSTCITY Radical Atoms

Credit: Tom Mesic

At the OK Center of Contemporary Art, the CyberArts exhibition is opened up in the afternoon. The award-winning works of Prix Ars Electronica are on display here.

Day One Festival Postcity Radical Atoms

Credit: Tom Mesic

This is also where you can visit “Inferno” – this performance has visitors strapped into robotic suits, which then move the humans around like dancers in a thought-out choreography.

Day One Festival Ars Electronica Radical Atoms

Credit: Tom Mesic

At the Art university Linz, the Campus Exhibition was opened. The exhibiting guest university this year is Tsinghua University from Beijing.

Radical Atoms Day One Festival Recap Postcity

Credit: Florian Voggeneder

Back at POSTCITY, the big Ars Electronica Opening is starting. Here, a number of varied performances can be seen: Drones are racing each other…

Radical Atoms Postcity Day One Recap Festival

Credit: Florian Voggeneder

….while Dragan Ilic uses a huge industrial robot to paint.

Radical Atoms Postcity Festival Recap Day One

Credit: Florian Voggeneder

Night owls and music lovers got their full share until late at night. Today, the festival is starting again – we cannot wait to see what will happen at Festival Day 2! Stay tuned…

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