The 2007 Ars Electronica Festival, Goodbye Privacy, dealt with the public and private spheres. With Marienstraße, a gritty little inner city lane dotted with vacant storefronts, it found an unconventional location that would be just the right stage on which to play out the festival theme. The encounter with publicity and privacy in the real world present, the interplay of Second Live virtuality and aesthetics with seedy urban reality provided the basic ingredients for the events staged along this stretch of backstreet.
The artificial reanimation of the vacant premises with art projects as a shop-within-a-shop concept, the reopening of the city’s first Chinese restaurant (with inner courtyard), an eatery that had been shuttered for years, productions set in garages and on vacant lots, the collaboration with the Horn School of Dance transformed Marienstraße into an almost surreal mixture of diverse publics and cultures. Other exciting projects included the Ars Electronica Futurelab’s large beach installation Pfarrplatz – Lido, which recreated Pfarrplatz as a 3D animation in Second Life and playfully mixed both realities, and Ganz Linz- Ein Gruppenfoto von oben, the largest group photo of a city, which was carried out in collaboration with the ORF Landesstudio.
In our Throwback series, we take a look back at past events, exhibitions, installations and other exciting happenings from the Ars Electronica universe since 1979.