Art
Thinking

The team members are given the freedom to follow their own research agendas; several of them also continue with their personal work as artists outside the Futurelab. Here artists and scientist can meet on a platform where crossing disciplines is a daily practice. Many members of the Futurelab see it as their home base, but work freely in exchange with different divisions of Ars Electronica. The terms “ecosystem” receives its justification from the intense and multidirectional exchange between the various parts of Ars Electronica. Those open membranes work not only within Ars Electronica, but also towards the outside, in exchange with partners and clients, but especially also with artists coming to the Ars Electronica Futurelab in the framework of one of the—meanwhile numerous—artist-in-residence programs. The artist-in-residence programs as well as an internal Ideas Expedition within the Futurelab Team constantly creates a flow of ideas that enables its members to raise questions even in a new field, to take apart stereotypes in a questioning process and thus to identify future potentials. Additionally, it was the necessity to explain Ars Electronica to partners in Japan that provided the ultimate catalysis needed to transform the practice of the Ars Electronica Futurelab into Art Thinking.