Target Audience

Thinking Deeper with STEAM
Rehan Bhana (UK)
Explore connections between academia and industry, learning about our PhD Hub and how STEAM thinking can help businesses tackle challenges through developing deeper perspectives, with Rehan Bhana, Associate Professor at BCU.

Extending Reality: Introducing the Past, Present and Future of Immersive Media
Adam Paigge (UK)
Join STEAMhouse Extended Reality Technician Adam Paigge in his talk about XR, how this can support STEAM collaboration and the ways in which STEAMhouse is leading such approaches in the West Midlands.

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.

Holy Hydra 3.0
Die geile Hydra & Raumteiler Kulturverein (AT)
The Holy Hydra is an interdisciplinary event in the parish church Urfahr – Jugendkirche Grüner Anker, (next to AEC Maindeck) which takes place for the third time this year. This time we will focus not only on dance performances, electronic music and new media art, but also on a room-filling installation to experience the church space in its full splendor. It will be different...

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.

Building Interdisciplinary Communities
Deborah Hustic (HR)
Hear from Deborah Hustic, Artistic Director at Radiona makerspace in Zagreb, Croatia, as she outlines her work in STEAM, making and creative investigation.

First BCU International STEAM Conference
STEAMhouse, Birmingham City University (UK)
Aimed at all those curious about cross-disciplinary thinking, researchers, innovators, industrial leaders, artists, scientists, technologists, engineers, mathematicians and those not bounded by their sectors, joined the First BCU International STEAM Conference in July 2020.

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.

STEAMhouse: Make to Innovate
Clayton Shaw (UK), James Hannam (UK)
In this presentation from the First BCU International STEAM Conference you will learn about STEAMhouse, BCU’s centre for collaborative innovation, through an introductory talk from Programme Manager Clayton Shaw and Prototyping & Operations Manager James Hannam.

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.

The Civil Society of the Future
Unabhängiges LandesFreiwilligen Zentrum (AT)
When, if not now, should we talk about the future of civil society? As with the refugee conflict in 2015, the corona crisis of 2020 highlighted the role of civil social engagement. Once again, it became clear how much the initiatives, associations, NGOs, NPOs and individuals we consider as “civil society” can do.

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.