Conferences / Lectures / Talks

Imagining Godzilla

Andy Best (FI/UK)

The sea is a place of uncertainty. It is never still, always sighing even on the calmest of still summer nights. The Baltic is the second largest inland sea in the world, composed mainly of brackish water, a mix of saline inflow from the Atlantic together with fresh water run-off from its huge catchment area, which is four times the size of the sea itself. Today, the Baltic is one of the most polluted seas in the world. The continual flow of commercial shipping bringing raw materials, food and retail goods to ports around it leaves trails of pollution in its wake. The run-off of agricultural fertilizers, particularly nitrogen and phosphorus, via rivers on the coast, have led to eutrophication and the growth of massive algae blooms that are a feature of both the coastlines and open sea regions. Many factors, local and global alike, affect the continuing ecological catastrophe facing the Baltic.

Facing Uncertainty and Its Discontents 

Pau Alsina (ES), Roc Parés (ES/MX), Marina Garcés (ES), Joan Soler-Adillon (ES), Tere Badia (ES), Pau Waelder (ES).

ROUNDTABLE: While we get used to dealing with those events in which the probability of a certain situation occurring is not known: what does it mean to live in a context of uncertainty? How to take the risk of uncertainty and try to slide their gains? How arts, sciences, technologies and thought have learned from it and propelled their practices of uncertainty?  

Liquid Matter

Laura Beloff (FI)

The boundary between wet and dry is blurring. Similarly, our expectations towards solid or soft objects and machines are being redefined. These developments are impacted by many different factors, from developments in biotechnology and life science to innovation in new materials and their behavior, among various other areas. Also, in the humanities and the arts, there has been a recent surge of interest towards material agencies and processes that are based on inorganic or biological matter and executed by non-human organisms. It could be said the realms of technology and biology – that is, the biologically grown and the artificially constructed – converge in liquid matter. This can be seen when looking into the methods and practices of biology, biotechnology and biochemistry, which involve technological tools and approaches to investigate biological organisms and create chemistry-based experiments, all of which typically take place in wet environments.

An Uncertain but Irresistible Revolution 

Héctor Ayuso (ES) with Carla Cascales Alimbau (ES), Xavi Cardona / Boldtron (ES), Enric Godes / Vasava (ES

ROUNDTABLE: In a technological world in which the present has eternalized and the oblivion is the security of the next innovation, what we call reality is a magma in which floats an endless number of images, data, pieces of information, flashbacks and promises of liberation. This fact requires us to find other rules, other ways of reading and new ways of looking through unexpected paths. 

Uncertainty with AI-terity

Koray Tahiroğlu (FI/TR)

The composition Uncertainty keeps the musician in a hesitant state of performance, providing a non-rigid but identifiable musical events, followed by ever shifting new sounds. Uncertainty is a composition written for the AI- terity instrument that comprises computational features of a particular artificial intelligence (AI) model to generate relevant audio samples for real- time audio synthesis. The unusual behaviour of the Al-terity puts the performer in an uncertain state during performance. Together with being able to move through timbre-changes in sonic space, the emergence of new sounds allows the musician to explore a whole new range of musical possibilities. Composition turns into a continuous state of playing, reformulating an idiomatic relationship with the Al-terity and opening up a fresh variety of musical demands.

Art and Science of the Political Ecology of Disasters 

José Luis de Vicente (ES), Joana Moll (ES), Andy Gracie (UK), Israel Rodríguez (ES), Ingrid Guardiola (ES), relator Vanina Hofman (AR) 

ROUNDTABLE: Catastrophes and vulnerability have brought us to the forefront the urgency of acting against the consequences of the Anthropocene. We will explore all the possible futures ahead, facing the interactions between biological and ecological systems, but also the media ecology, within a relational ecology of practices where art, science and technology collide. 

On Bio_Sonic_Agencies. 

Brandon LaBelle (US), Robertina Šebjanič (SI), Oscar Martín (ES), Vanessa Lorenzo (ES), Laura Benítez (ES). 

ROUNDTABLE: In a world dominated by the visual, could contemporary resistances be auditory? What is the materiality of sound? How does the materiality of sound affect listening? What resistances can be configured from working with biomaterials and sound? Do these bio_sonic_agencies open up other possible spaces that do not exist in the visual regime? 

!brute_force

The Culture Yard (DK), CLICK (DK)

Responding to the coronavirus pandemic, the !brute_force project focuses on the future of market-driven diagnostic wearables and AI-based health monitoring technologies.

!brute_force: Feeding the Algorithm / AI LAB Journey

Maja Smrekar (SI)

Responding to the coronavirus pandemic, the !brute_force project focuses on the future of market-driven diagnostic wearables and AI-based health monitoring technologies. A human and dog performer climb through an installation of platforms and empty spaces. Both wear Electrocardiograph ECG/EKG diagnostic wearables, used for the medical monitoring of chronic heart and respiratory conditions.

!brute_force: Workflow Reflections – Panel

Speakers: Alen Balja (SI/CH), Martí Sànchez-Fibla (ES), Maja Smrekar (SI), Tina Šolar (SI), Mia Zahariaš (SI), Moderation: Tatiana Kourochkina (RU)

Responding to the coronavirus pandemic, the !brute_force project focuses on the future of market-driven diagnostic wearables and AI-based health monitoring technologies. A human and dog performer climb through an installation of platforms and empty spaces. Both wear Electrocardiograph ECG/EKG diagnostic wearables, used for the medical monitoring of chronic heart and respiratory conditions.

From Art to Innovation: Do They Really Need Us?

Gašper Beg (SI), Luka Frelih (SI), Miha Horvat (SI), Janez Janša (SI), Jurij Krpan (SI), Marko Peljhan (SI/US), Irena Pivka (SI), Marko Pritržnik (SI), Peter Purg (SI)

Despite the widely embraced opinion that involving artists and creatives in innovation processes contributes to better results, very few research and development platforms are employing artists or art thinking in their innovation teams. Die talk's participants will discuss the challenges for artists, scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs stemming from essentially non-existing collaborative/open innovations.

Talent Talks

As a complementary international part of the category u19–create your world of the Prix Ars Electronica, jury member and moderator Conny Lee (AT) is talking with some of this years winners about their ideas, creativity and future visions.

Jugend hackt remote: digital gardening

Jugend hackt Austria (AT), c3 (HU), mb21 (DE), ArtechLAB (NL), Ars Electronica (AT)

We present the outcome of Jugend hackt remote: digital gardening, which is a hackathon for young people from 12 to 18 years. It took place during August 29th and was inviting young coders from Austria, Germany, Hungary and the Netherlands

Making of Lunar Pearl

Henryandpartners (TH), SpaceZab (TH)

Pearl of Lunar explores infrastructural desire and the future of Belt-and-Road Initiatives as seen through wealth accumulation, labor infiltration, and geopolitical control; but also, more ephemerally, the affective meshwork of possessiveness and greed that functions at the individual and corporate level. Lunar Rock is a project by SpaceZab, a group of young scientists’ journey into Trad city, a rocky seaside landscape. They wade through rocks and the oceanside, excavating magmatic rock from the shore and the sea. The quest is to discover earth elements resembling moon dust for their future research and experiments.

Creative Question Challenge: Human being and "soft" technologies

Christiaan Zwanikken (NL), DM Hoyt (US), Emmanuel Grimaud (FR)

'Let us finish what we started'. This is how the UN introduces its first Sustainable Development Goal - to end poverty in all forms and dimensions by 2030. The 17 Sustainable Development Goals and their 169 targets have been described as a sprawling, misconceived mess of grandiose intentions.

Rebecca Merlic - The City as a House

VENT gallery (AT)

Vast amounts of pictures, sounds, videos and 3D scans are organized as environments in Rebecca Merlic’s The City as a House, in form of an interactive visual novel. A work about the experiment of a white European 30-year-old heterosexual human living in Tokyo without inhabiting a private apartment over a period of time. A speculative exploration of the possibilities of abolishing known forms of habitation.

Creative Question Challenge: Between scientific discovery and perceptual expansion

Dmitry Gelfand & Evelina Domnitch (NL/BY), Guillaume Schweicher (BE/LU), Florian Schreck (DE)

Let us finish what we started'. This is how the UN introduces its first Sustainable Development Goal - to end poverty in all forms and dimensions by 2030. The 17 Sustainable Development Goals and their 169 targets have been described as a sprawling, misconceived mess of grandiose intentions. The title of the development agenda itself - 'Transforming our World' - oozes utopian ambition. It was adopted by 193 nations in 2015. Five years later and with ten years left, how do you think our world will transform?

Art in Flux Live: Autonomy @ Ars Electronica Channel

The Art in Flux founders introduce the ethos of the organisation and their own practices through live video tours.

Gare Loch Duality and the #UndesiredLine - Live

B.D. Owens, Donna Holford-Lovell

Two new films by B.D. Owens followed by a live Q&A with the artist and NEoN Director, Donna Holford-Lovell.

Gare Loch Duality and the #UndesiredLine

B.D. Owens, Donna Holford-Lovell

B. D. Owens takes the viewer on an interactive wander through the landscape, artistic process and historical context of his ongoing, multifaceted project Gare Loch Duality and the #UndesiredLine.