Art Thinking

What are the futures? In these unstable and unpredictable times we live in, what kind of attitude should we have to create the futures? Ars Electronica’s Art Thinking is a creative mindset shaping our approach to these futures – and what’s more, it is a highly customizable step-by-step process to transform visions into tangible prototypes for the public to engage in a dialog about these futures. 

The Art Thinking method serves as a starting point for numerous projects, bridging artistic work from the vast Ars Electronica network with Creative Questions that are essential, challenging, and inspiring. Using unique tools and environments researched and developed by the Ars Electronica Futurelab, we put Art Thinking into practice with our partners. As a form of circular creative thinking, we draw inspiration to ask questions that form visions. We transform these visions into prototypes to start a dialogue for and about future societies with the public – which in turn is used as inspiration for iterations, further questions, and development into new areas. 

Creative Questions and Creative Solutions

Design, and design thinking, is useful for creating a tangible solution to a problem. Art, on the other hand, is a process that allows us to take a 360-degree view of where we are, to ask questions about the futures, and to explore visions and choices for the futures. We believe that in this day and age, we need not a fixed map for one future, but a compass to guide us through different futures for each of us. Art Thinking is a method to foster this futures-forward thinking. 

Let’s look at this from a different perspective. Design thinking is effective when developing future products, services, and systems through creative solutions to a certain issue or given theme. However, when finding the essential issue or theme itself, we need the power of art to think critically and change the way we look at things. Thus, Art Thinking contributes to a vision or philosophy of the futures by exploring new directions and possibilities through Creative Questions to challenge and inspire the futures. 

The Art Thinking Process 

The Ars Electronica Futurelab brings Art Thinking to life in its projects, drawing on the creative ecosystem of interdisciplinary art, technology, and society that Ars Electronica has fostered since 1979. Our Futurelab experts work closely with partners from a variety of fields, including business, government, culture and education, and research institutions. We help them put Art Thinking into practice, using tools and environments that we have researched and developed like Creative Compass and Future Visions workshops. 

At the Ars Electronica Festival and the museum Ars Electronica Center, visitors can experience the future inspirations that artists create. The Prix Ars Electronica, where the most advanced art of the year has been accumulated since 1987, is equally full of questions about the futures. By incorporating the insights gained from these works and conversations with the artists into the research process, the Creative Questions are addressed. 

Based on these Creative Questions, we then envision the futures we wish to propose together with our partners and give meaning to technology through artistic exploration with Futurelab creators who have a variety of expertise. The prototypes created here are, in a sense, the tangible futures. 

By presenting the prototypes as social experiments to the public – at the Ars Electronica Festival as well as other events and exhibitions or venues like the Ars Electronica Center and our partner’s facilities – we create a dialogue and obtain feedback. Based on the new inspiration we gain from this process, we will continue this cycle of creation by envisioning the futures of the project. In this way, through collaboration on various projects, we nurture Art Thinking together with our partners and implement concrete activities toward a better society. 

Highlights