Ars Electronica AIxMusic Online Hackathon: Final Presentations
Annelies Termeer (NL) moderator + Participants

For the occasion of the first online Festival, Ars Electronica will host its first international AIxMusic Hackathon as part of the AIxMusic Festival 2020.

AIxMusic - Artificial Stupidity
Moisés Horta-Valenzuela (MX/US), Artemi-Maria Gioti (GR), Ali Nikrang (AT), Alex Braga (IT) and Portrait XO (US)

The panel on Artificial Stupidity invites artist present at the Ars Electronica Festival to share their experiences in the context of AIxMusic. AI is a media trend right now and a controversial topic.

A Theory of Change
Anne Nigten (NL)

The STARTS Prize is an annual European prize for innovative projects at the interface of Science, Technology, and the ARTS. This article reflects on the most striking outcomes of a study that was conducted in the spring of 2020, to evaluate the first three STARTS Prize editions. The STARTS Prize aims to promote art as a catalyst for change and innovation in the fields of technology, science and the social sphere. It has mobilized an impressive number of artists, designers and engineers and built a strong brand in recent years.

Mapping Collaborative Practice
Denise Doyle (UK), Richard Glover (UK), Martin Khechara (UK), Christian Cherene (ES), Norma Deseke (DE), Pei-Ying Lin (TW), Miranda Graaf (NL), Giulia Tomasello (IT), Tommaso Busolo (IT)

Interdisciplinary collaboration across the arts and sciences can create friction and uncertainty between creative partners from different backgrounds. How can we overcome these moments, and are they integral to any collaborative or emergent process? What role does art and science collaboration have in addressing global challenges in 2020? Chaired by Richter Glover and Martin Khechara, participants and researchers of the University of Wolverhampton’s STARTS Methodologies research project take part in this digital exchange of ideas.

STARTS Prize Exhibition Tour

The annual STARTS Prize Exhibition presents a selection of current best practice examples at the intersection of science, technology and the arts. Kristina Maurer and Karla Spiluttini take the viewers on a journey through this year’s exhibited projects in Kepler’s Garden. From circular economy to the relationship between ecology and technology, through digital humanism and empathic approaches to artificial intelligence, the exhibition shows the outstanding diversity of artistic practice in the STARTS field.

Salon Universitas
Melanie Baumgartner (AT), Florian Hartmann (AT), Christoph Guger (AT), Markus Hohenwarter (AT), Alicia Hofstätter (AT), Corinna Hörmann (AT), Martina Mara (AT), Kathrin Meyer (DE), Christopher Lindinger (AT)

This session brings together four of the exhibited teams – the LIT Robopsychology Lab, the JKU Linz School of Education, the LIT Soft Material Lab and the Institute for Integrated Circuits and their collaborative partner g.tec Medical Engineering – to discuss their creative process and prototype development.

STARTS Prize Forum: Andrea Ling
Andrea Ling (CA)

Andrea Ling, winner of this year’s Grand Prize for Artistic Exploration, introduces her winning project “Design by Decay, Decay by Design”, a series of artifacts that exhibit designed decay developed for the 2019 Ginkgo Bioworks Creative Residency on how to design a world without waste and talks about her artistic and creative process.

STARTS Prize Forum: Olga Kisseleva
Olga Kisseleva (RU)

Olga Kisseleva (RU), winner of this year’s Grand Prize for Innovative Collaboration, and Andrea Ling (CA), winner of the Grand Prize for Artistic Exploration, give insight into their practice.

Art Thinking Forum: Humanizing Technology
Mara Balestrini (IT), Olga Kisseleva (RU), Alexander Mankowsky (DE), Hideaki Ogawa (JP/AT)

Art Thinking is a platform for discussing the role of art in the future, in the context of industry, society, and ecology. The forum is supported by the innovative communication design company Hakuhodo. In tandem with Ars Electronica's interest in emerging technologies and their effect on society, their forward-thinking creative approach strongly complements the topic of the panel: future arts, and how cutting-edge and creative artistic examples can be used to humanize technology and improve society.

Art Thinking as Catalyst
Jurij Krpan (SI), Alejandro Martín (ES), Camille Baker (UK), Veronika Liebl (AT)

The Science+Technology+Arts = STARTS Initiative is a program of the European Commission to encourage synergies between the arts and technology that support the innovation industry and society. STARTS promotes the inclusion of artists in research and innovation activities thoughout Europe.

Multi-eyed creature navigating and traversing the grove
PhAMA/ FAMM department at Vilnius Academy of Arts (LT)

AE Garden Vilnius Mozilla Hub hosts directed multiangle and XR Live Experience of the Garden where around 10 live events and usual grove life are happening in numerous spaces inside and outside and dozen cameras are directed by humans, animals and plants. You can navigate through busy culture events or find your calm spot to enjoy the life of nature.

Experiencing lives
Mindaugas Gapševičius (DE/LT), Brigita Kasperaitė (DE/LT), Rūta Spelskytė (LT), Auksė Gaižauskaitė (LT)

The artist talk raises the question of collaboration between different species. It will start with a presentation of three projects: two toolkits for experimenting with living organisms and a conversation about microorganisms and their hosts. The artist talk is hosted by the Alt lab, a non-disciplinary research laboratory dedicated to artistic-scientific research and implementation of interdisciplinary projects.

Tree of/and Life
Center for Urban History of East-Central Europe, Lviv, Ukraine (UA)

The film tells the story of a craftsman's creativity and his connection to a tree that extracts an invisible form from a material substance. The act of creating by a human being is subject to the power of the substance that governs the carver independently determining the result. The subjectivity of nature is also manifested in the film through chemical damage - images and memory are absorbed and disappear behind the veil.

Future from the past: imaginations on the margins
Center for Urban History of East-Central Europe, Lviv, Ukraine (UA)

The Center for Urban History will make video journeys to two places, which are located in rural areas but reflect urban imagination. We will travel to the Center for Space Research and Communication of the National Center for Space Management and Testing of the State Space Agency of Ukraine.

This is Sónar+D

Sónar+D – Sónar Festival's creative technologies conference – is an international congress exploring how creative minds are changing our present and imagining new futures, in collaboration with researchers, innovators and business leaders from all sectors and industries.

Workshop: Mycelial Landscapes: How Fungi Shape the World and Take the Shape of the Future
Kaitlin Bryson

This workshop explores the incredible world of fungi from their ecology to their biochemistry and explores how these amazing organisms shape and make the world around us. We will also learn about how we can work with fungi helping them take shapes and forms for building sustainable futures. We will do a simple exercise of making mycelium hands to stretch our notions of touch and physicality during the time of the pandemic.

Workshop: Microbial Theater
Mick Lorusso and Joel Ong

In this workshop participants will learn about the microbiome to develop their own stories about microbes, collect and observe samples using microscopy, and create short performances based on their stories and findings.

What Type of Crisis is This?
Walter Ötsch (AT)

We invite people from the fields of philosophy, sociology, economics and media studies to take part in a public discussion of these questions. Experts will present their views, challenge each other and offer suggestions for the future of our society.

Timbres of Summer
Center for Urban History of East-Central Europe, Lviv, Ukraine (UA)

The team of curators from the Center will visit Orest Bachmaha at his house on the outskirts of Lviv to conduct an interview. In the 1970s and 1980s this person was part of a huge army of amateurs, shaped in the former USSR. But he belonged to a special circle of amateurs, such as media amateurs, who produced radios and recording machines, and worked on the margin between amateur film and video art.

The History of Dark Matter Retold
Adeyemi Michael

Dark Matter by Adeyemi Michael It was during the DARK MATTER exhibition in Science Gallery London that History of Dark Matter Retold was conceptualised. Scientist and actress Laura-Joy Pieters collaborated with director Adeyemi Michael to produce a film that portrayed Laura’s birth and heritage. When speaking about what she wished to communicate with the film, Laura expressed that “The achievements of black women are all around us and are present throughout history, yet they are rarely ever seen or acknowledged, much like the nature of the elusive dark matter”.