Open Futurelab 2024

We at the Ars Electronica Futurelab understand this year’s festival motto HOPE as a process that can be shaped through art and active participation. We therefore invite you to shape HOPE together: Visit us from September 4 to 8 at the Open Futurelab – right next to the entrance of POSTCITY at the Ars Electronica Festival 2024! Here you will find our latest works as well as the Futurelab Lounge, where you can get to know our lab members – who will also be giving tours of the Futurelab’s work. On Saturday evening, the audience favorite Futurelab Night awaits you again in Deep Space 8K of the Ars Electronica Center.

HOPE does not come for free. Sometimes it can be even hard work to achieve the status that allows for HOPE. And having HOPE is more than pure, unreflective optimism, it is based on active preparation for something we can’t fully understand or control. Art is one of humanity’s most powerful instruments to experience these new potential worlds and enter a dialogue about the future in its plural forms, inspiring HOPE in the process. We at the Ars Electronica Futurelab understand this year’s Festival motto as a process that can be shaped together through active participation. As visitors we invite you to engage with us and our experimental ideas and projects to explore in depth what holds the power to create HOPE as driving force for social change.

At the Open Futurelab, you will encounter the latest works of the Futurelab, many of which were created with other artists and international partners. Participation stations, research prototypes and installations are used to explore many topics, from democracy to rural exodus, from post-glacial landscapes and public health to literally foldable sound spaces. Guided Tours by Futurelab members convey the process of creation and hope.

In the adjoining Futurelab Lounge, you can enjoy conversations with our researchers and artists about creative business innovation, key research areas and modes of collaboration.

On Saturday evening, Futurelab Night in Deep Space 8K at the Ars Electronica Center lets you experience Futurelab’s work audiovisually on a large scale – from immersive research reports to artistic performances. Some of the works also unfold in Deep Space 8K during the day.

The Futurelab will be showcasing a number of current works at the Ars Electronica Festival. For example, the EU project SHARESPACE is researching how people will be able to interact socially with the help of digital avatars in the near future. This vision is being creatively realized by the Futurelab team and a young artist collective from Berlin and London. In Deep Space 8K, visitors can get in touch with their inner child, explore synchronization with others and decentralized interaction between people and avatars.

At the Open Futurelab, visitors can plunge into the fictional pandemic scenario of Buzz Swatters, among other things: the immersive gaming experience brings to life the importance of collective action in disease prevention. Origami robotics can also be seen again, with collaborations in areas such as fashion and a Gigantic Oribotic Spiral. The ambitious Data Art & Science Project focuses on the topic of rural exodus this year: point cloud data from the Japanese government is linked to the memories of villagers facing the challenges of population decline. The project shows that citizen science and artistic journalism can be an important part of the discussion about social change – and a key to taking action as a society.