Exhibitions / Projects

Dancing Water

Leon Kainz (AT)

This installation is based on a simple physical principle: the generation of electrostatic charges using water. The charged water droplets whirl in dynamic tracks around copper rods and react to nearby bodies. The collected charge can make a light bulb glow and generate flashes of lightning that can be centimetres long.

The Wild State

Campus

THE WILD STATE is the title of this year’s Kunstuniversität Campus activities at Hauptplatz Linz during Ars Electronica Festival 2020 from 9. – 13. September 2020. Existing since 2002, the intention of the Campus format is to invite outstanding international universities working in the academic fields of media arts and design. This year with an exhibition with contributions by various partner universities, as well as the departments Interface Cultures, Visual Communication, Fashion&Technology, Art Education, and Design: Tech.Tex. Special events comprise façade projection “Interfacing Hauptplatz”, the Internet flea market “Yami-ichi”, discursive format “Agora Digitalis” and the top notch nightline “Sound Campus”.

JKU LIT @ Ars Electronica

The digital revolution, demographic changes, and the climate crisis–addressing the complex, conflicting fields of our time requires an epistemic landscape that is conducive to traversing academic parameters. Crossing the borders between disciplines should be considered a starting point for possibilities – even essential as a to interlink them – rather than an act of deconstruction.

Planting a Resort for Mental Ecology

MPLab – Liepāja University Art Research Laboratory (LV)

People of Liepāja know very well that a garden is essential – without planting a park along the coast, the little seaside town would be consumed by sand, wind and water. The roots of trees keep the structure of the dunes stable, and people of Liepāja can retreat from the everyday struggles and storms in a safe garden environment.

A glimpse into the cultural capital program

European Capital of Culture Esch2022 (LU)

The Night Sky: Unveiling What Only the Dark Reveals

Open Science Hub - Portugal, Municipality of Figueira de Castelo Rodrigo (PT)

Open Science Hub - Portugal (OSHub-PT; Plataforma de Ciência Aberta) is a social innovation project that brings together science, technology and innovation with the daily life of local and regional communities, supporting schools and societal actors in tackling local relevant challenges. It is a project of the Municipality of Figueira de Castelo Rodrigo, in collaboration with Leiden University.

Achaeoscillator_Towards incorporeal forms of sensing listening and gaze

Terra Australis Ignota Research Group (CL) with Santiago Museum of Contemporary Art (MAC)

Achæoscillator displays the drastic weather conditions of the southernmost island in the world on a virtualized representation of the end/beginning of the Americas. A one-person experience, where the research presents traces and connections between the ancestors of the Yagán community, the Kawesqar and Selk’nam and the Antarctic, Scotia and South America continental plates, offering an inestimable and uncontrollable source of Gaia's power.

Presence of Absence

Tangible Media Group | MIT Media Lab (US)

The Cambridge Garden by Tangible Media Group for Ars Electronica Festival 2020, we will be featuring selected projects that materialize the Presence of Absence. Our garden introduces the latest in Tangible Telepresence research to engage people who collaborate across time and space with synchronized tangibles. We also feature a variety of dynamic computational materials we call Radical Atoms that foster a new form of human-material interactions.

Art and Nanotechnology

gnration (PT) and INL – International Iberian Nanotechnology Institute (PT / EU)

gnration presents a virtual tour of The Invention of Sense by Marcel Weber. The exhibition explores extrasensory perception and a new sensuality. In the featured works, as well as in their presentation, Sensing, Discovering and Exciting are discussed, stimulated and elevated. The exhibition takes the premise further by extending the established restrictions of gallery space and turning the room itself into a medium and a stimulating, visceral experience.

art+science lab

Center for the Promotion of Science – CPN (RS)

The central segment of the Belgrade Garden is the premiere of the winning artwork from the national art+science selection for 2020. Digital Prayer by Kristina Tica uses ML techniques for establishing a connection between the canonical structure of an Orthodox icon and the image artificially generated by a computer program. The Garden will also host a musical performance I Sit and Worry About Her by Jasna Jovicevic (winner of the national selection in 2019), based on sonification of brain waves. Both works came out as results of interdisciplinary dialogues and an intensive scientific mentorship/residency program facilitated by CPN at principal national research centers.

Real Feelings. Emotion and Technology

HeK (House of Electronic Arts Basel) (CH)

Emotions are at the core of human experience. They influence every aspect of our lives and shape our social behaviour. In the 21st century, technology has started to engage with emotions like never before. The international group show at HeK presents works by 20 artists ―in mediums ranging from artificial intelligence, interactive installations, robotics and biometrics to gaming, video installations and virtual reality by 20 artists― that explore how technology can assess and trigger our emotions.

Solar Orchard Garden

ESPRONCEDA - Institute of Art & Culture (ES), MIRA Festival (ES), Insitute Ramon Llull (ES), Helsinki XR Center (FI), ./studio3, Institut for Experimental Architecture (AT), MEET Digital Culture Center (IT), UCA (UK)

The Solar Orchard Garden is a complex system that activates the curiosity of visitors / participants by play with two complementary concepts: quintessence, the fifth element of alchemy, and the Gaia Hypothesis, which looks at Earth as a self-regulated complex system.

Claudia Hart’s The Ruins

bitforms gallery, New York (US)

The Ruins is an exhibition that implements still lifes to contemplate the canons of a patriarchal Western civilization: modernist paintings and manifestos of political utopias. Join Hart in an intimate video profile as she discusses the works as meditations on a world in crisis, speaking to an unstable present experienced through the possibility of simulation-technologies that use data to model the crystallization of past, future, and present into a perpetual now.

Galerie Charlot: 10 Year Anniversary Exhibition

Galerie Charlot (FR / IS)

The Paris and Tel Aviv-based Galerie Charlot celebrates its tenth year with an anniversary exhibition in Paris. The curated show features currently represented artists, showing a diversity of approaches to media over several generations.

Markus Hofer “Visuelle Hypothese” – an exhibition @ AAA project space of MAM Mario Mauroner Contemporary Art Vienna

MAM Mario Mauroner Contemporary Art Vienna (AT)

The focus of Markus Hofer’s exhibition “Visuelle Hypothese” is the process of visual perception, in which our brain is supplied with information about objects visible in space through the retinal and optic nerve, and compares them objects to remembered and memorized objects. It is only by matching our memory to what we have seen that we can recognize an object and determine its function.

Welcome to spaceEU Linz

Ars Electronica (AT)

​Ars Electronica has a long history of working with space related content and narratives. The EU project spaceEU allowed them to open new collaborations on a European level. Together with eleven organizations, Ars Electronica developed and produced a wide range of space engagement activities addressing youth, families and teachers.

Fulldome / VR & AR Lab

Martin Kusch, Director ǀ Fulldome / VR & AR Lab, Ruth Schnell, Head Department of Digital Arts, University of Applied Arts Vienna (AT)

The Fulldome/VR & AR Lab at the Digital Arts Department of the University of Applied Arts Vienna is a platform for new creative processes with a focus on digital applications for fulldome, VR, and AR environments. Experimental research projects are carried out through interdisciplinary exchange among students, teachers, and researchers working to develop new artistic grammars while questioning the influence of immersive devices. The dome at Ars Electronica is part of the Lab’s infrastructure.