What is the role of art in the 21st century? And how can we apply the art for better future society?

Art creates creative questions and design creates the creative solutions. Art is a catalyst for shaping a better future society, a way to open up new perspectives, encourage curiosity to look at what is behind the scenes and to stimulate creative solutions. Art Thinking is a process of applying artistic thinking and an artful view to a broader range of challenges.

How can we become more human? How can microbes safe the earth? How can we co-exist with technology as our second nature? Artists have always understood the power of questions. They transcend from spiritual to material, function to form, natural science to social science, in search of a best match of a theme, medium and expression. They detect social and technological trends that are not yet given a name, and give a form to communicate those micro trends tangibly. We call the process as Art Thinking.

In this research, we are exploring the Art Thinking programs for participants of different disciplines consisting of inspirational tours, talks, workshops, prototyping and actions. Using the Art Thinking as common driving force, it connects different backgrounds such as creators, industries, governments, and citizens by cultivating a creative mindset of questioning the society. Thus, not only as a research domain, but also as a new transdisciplinary methodology, Art Thinking has the potential to catalyze innovation, strategy, education and policy.

We believe that art and artistic thinking is the best way to understand even the most complex issues and systems created by humankind; be they societal, economic, political, or technological. Art holds the power to scrutinize existing beliefs, cast doubt on common perceptions, and find a way to think outside the box.

The goal of this research initiative is to empower citizens to take on the various societal and technological complexities facing us in today’s fast-paced and fluctuating environment, with the new attitude of Art Thinking.

Process: Create Your Compass and Envision the Future.

At Ars Electronica Futurelab, Art Thinking experts design programs to meet the needs of various partners. The program generally consists of three phases: inspiring, envisioning, and prototyping.

In the Inspiration phase, participants experience how to generate Creative Questions by experiencing a variety of artworks featured at the Ars Electronica Center and Ars Electronica Festival, and by participating in special workshops such as Art Thinking Card Workshop.

In the Envision phase, the questions discovered in the inspiration phase are sublimated into missions for the partners and a concrete plan of action is developed to realize that missions. The goal of this phase is to conceptualize and sketch the future ideas.

In the Prototype phase, we embody that vision through research and development. The various Futurelab artists, researchers and partners collaborate to create a tangible future, and present it in public to gain feedback and generate social dialogue.

By repeating these three phases, we will apply Art Thinking to the development of our partners’ human resources and the creation of a new culture for innovation.

Art Thinking
Boosting Art Thinking in Business – European Institutions Explore “Sustainability” Featured in Nikkei, October 15, 2022

Introducing the FabLab as interactive exhibition space
Irene Posch, Hideaki Ogawa, Christopher Lindinger, Roland Haring, Horst Hörtner
June 2010 IDC ’10: Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children. Publisher: ACM