Women in Media Arts

Feminism and Climate Change: UCLA at the 2017 Ars Electronica Festival

The Campus exhibition that Linz Art University has hosted during the Ars Electronica Festival since 2002 extends an invitation to an art college from a foreign country to come to Linz and showcase the work being done there. This year’s guest is the University of California at Los Angeles. In this interview, Professor Victoria Vesna gives us a preview of UCLA’s exhibition, FEMINIST CLIMATE CHANGE: Beyond the Binary.

Nonvisual Art: Novel Images of Magical Beauty

Lisa Buttinger displayed meticulous attention to the most minute details as she went about completing her graduation project at Linz’s High School for Artistic Design. In this interview, she talks about what she calls nonvisual art, an innovative artistic medium that has garnered her twofold honors—the Golden Nica in the 2017 Prix Ars Electronica’s u19 – CREATE YOUR WORLD category and an Honorary Mention from the 2017 STARTS Prize.

Resistance from Below

Chrystal Tesla is an average citizen whose homemade devices enable her to successfully fend off the incessant incursions of surveillance technology. This scenario created by artist Kathrin Stumreich and entitled “What would Ted Kaczynski’s daughter do?” has been honored by the City of Linz with the Marianne.von.Willemer.2016 Prize.

The Wandering Artist Project

For her proposal to send a robot with artistic skills into outer space, robotics engineer Sarah Petkus was the recipient of an Honorary Mention from the 2016 art&science@ESA. In this interview, she talks about her plans for her upcoming residency at the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Ars Electronica Futurelab, about humane robots, and the essential elements that actually constitute a robot.

The Artist-in-Residence is Yen Tzu Chang

Yen Tzu Chang (TW) is the recipient of the residency STEAM imaging jointly hosted by the Fraunhofer Institute for Medical Image Computing (MEVIS) and Ars Electronica. The Taiwanese media artist will thus have a unique opportunity to work closely together with the Institute’s research staff.

Ghalia Elsrakbi: "Art Is a Collaborative Playground"

Mainstays of media art in general and the Prix Ars Electronica’s Hybrid Art category in particular are hybrid and transdisciplinary projects and approaches. In this interview, juror Ghalia Elsrakbi talks about her take on hybrid art and what she sees as the role art can play in 2017.

Martina Mara: "More Women in Robotics!"

Even in the 21st century, robotics R&D is still a male domain. On the occasion of International Women’s Day, we discussed this issue with Martina Mara of the Ars Electronica Futurelab. She’s a media psychologist and director of robo-psychology.

Réka Bucsi: "I like its playful ways"

Réka Bucsi’s animated short film “Symphony no. 42” got her shortlisted at the 87th Academy Awards. In April, she’ll be one of the 2017 Prix Ars Electronica jurors selecting this year’s Golden Nica recipients.

Women in Media Arts

Ars Electronica launched an online database especially for women in media arts in September 2016. Women in Media Arts now makes it possible for users themselves to input information and modify the database’s entries about female artists. Here, project manager Florina Costamoling provides a brief introduction to the database designed to be used by, among others, curators and artists.

Prix Ars Electronica Seeks Female Media Artists!

Entries to the competition to determine the honorees of the 30th Prix Ars Electronica are now being accepted! Four Golden Nica statuettes and prizemoney of up to €10,000 in each category await this year’s outstanding media artists. But what’s the story with gender distribution among Prix Ars Electronica prizewinners? We discussed this issue with Gerfried Stocker and the Prix Ars Electronica staff.

The Journey to Mars

Even if signals aren’t being received from the Schiaparelli Test Lander on that evening, we nevertheless had an absolutely fascinating time at the ESA Mission Control Centre in Darmstadt, where we followed the decisive moments of the Mars landing in the company of scientists and artist Aoife Van Linden Tol. Here, we present a few impressions of the journey.

Second Story: Old Objects, New Stories

Aoife van Linden Tol takes printed objects that are endowed with emotions and gives them a new start. In her performance “Second Story,” she blows up old photos, passports, love letters, etc. in controlled explosions. Here, she tells us how her first test detonation went, what we can expect in her September performance, and how we can submit stuff to get blown to smithereens!

Aoife Van Linden Tol: Explosions as Creative Forces

Violent explosions are sources of particular fascination to artist Aoife Van Linden Tol. An art&science residency is giving her the opportunity to visit the European Space Agency (ESA) and Ars Electronica Futurelab to soak up a healthy dose of inspiration for her next project. In this interview, she talks about, among other things, the fact that there’s a lot more to explosions than destructive force.

Lauren McCarthy Provokes "Fellow Feelings" in Her Very Own Way

Designer, artist and programmer Lauren McCarthy explores the structures and systems of social interaction, identity as well as self-presentation and the potential of technology of how it can influence the dynamics between those traits. During her Transmit³-Residency at the Queensland University of Technology, she wants to find out about the influence of Big Data on the togetherness in front of the large multimedia-display “The Cube”.

Becoming a resident with sparking ideas

We are pleased to announce the names of the artists who will be coming to the Ars Electronica Futurelab to develop exhibits for the Sparks project!