All visitors to the Ars Electronica Festival are invited to participate in an interactive performance that will ask them questions about their personal future and the future of us all. The visitors’ answers will be converted into binary codes and woven into fabric on table looms. The result is a canvas that is both a collaborative work and an archive of opinions.
The project by the Department of Media Design at the University of Arts Linz combines “old” and “new” technologies. It draws parallels between the development of digital media, such as AI and algorithms, and the traditional art of weaving.
Ja-Nein, photo: Sifan Pan
Ja-Nein, photo: Michael Wittmann
Using the shafts of the loom, visitors’ opinions are translated into individual patterns that represent the “fabric of the future”: If the earliest human civilisations were also created on looms, and today we sit in front of our computers, what will we weave with the help of new technologies? Hopes or nightmares for the future?
The installation documents the moods and opinions of visitors to the Ars Electronica Festival in real time. It questions how our data is being permanently collected and stored as a “digital footprint”. Instead of cookies or paper archives, a binary loom system is used.
Bios
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Marharyta Varabel
BY
Marharyta Varabel was born in Minsk, Belarus. From 2015 to 2019, she studied graphic design at the Minsk State Academy of Arts. Since 2022, she has been studying at the Department of textile art design at the University of Arts Linz.
In 2023, she exhibited at a congress of the Austrian Society for Sleep Medicine and Sleep Research in Linz. In 2024 she was part of the costume design team for the performance Ätherleib at the event The Sound I’d Like to Wear at the Ars Electronica Center.
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Melanie Steinhuber
AT
Melanie Steinhuber, born in Upper Austria in 2001, discovered her interest in art at an early age. After completing secondary school, she graduated from the HBLA for Artistic Design in Linz with distinction. She studied to become a teacher at the University of Arts in Linz, specializing in media design and visual education. Initial handicrafts and tinkering developed into professional work. She has been a teacher at a secondary school since September and is happy to encourage young people’s creativity.
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Sifan Pan
CN
Sifan Pan is currently completing her PhD at the University of Arts Linz. She studied art education at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Art (BA) and Art in Context at the Berlin University of the Arts (MA). Her focus lies in the development of participatory and artistic projects and in the practice of art education.
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Sveta Shuvaeva
First Sveta comleted her training in environmental design (Samara University of Architecture and Civil Engineering, Russia). After her studies she worked as an independent artist. She is currently completing a second degree in textile art design at the University of Arts Linz.
Credits
A project of the Department of Media Design at the Institute for Art and Education at the University of Arts Linz (Univ.-Prof. Dr. Alexis Dworsky). Implementation of the course: Michael Wittmann (MA)