Topic

The Transparency of Randomness
Mathias Gartner (AT), Vera Tolazzi (AT)
"The Transparency of Randomness" is an interactive installation that provides insight into the world of randomness. Random numbers are continuously generated through a transparent dice system, to be used as the basis for real-time calculations and visualizations. Through its use of diverse materials, the process is influenced by the complexity of nature.

Digital Government in a Box
LIT Law Lab, Johannes Kepler University (AT)
From the “transparent citizen” and “social scoring” to AI-supported truth finding in the courtroom and machine-generated administrative notices: the digitization of administration and jurisdiction has many facets. It requires not only a consideration of what is technically possible, but also of what is legally permissible and what is desired in terms of legal policy. Against this background, the LIT Law Lab has two installations dedicated to the legal framework conditions (fundamental rights and data protection), problems and proposed solutions for a digitized enforcement.

Al truth machine
LIT Law Lab, Johannes Kepler Universität (AT)
From the “transparent citizen” and ”social scoring” to AI-supported truth finding in the courtroom and machine-generated administrative notices: the digitization of administration and jurisdiction has many facets. It requires not only a consideration of what is technically possible, but also what is legally permissible and what is desired in terms of legal policy. Against this background, the LIT Law Lab has two installations dedicated to the legal framework conditions (fundamental rights and data protection), problems and proposed solutions for a digitized enforcement.

Biocomputer Rhythms
Interdisciplinary Centre for Computer Music Research (ICCMR), University of Plymouth (UK), Eduardo Reck Miranda (BR/UK)
Biocomputer Rhythms is a piece for prepared piano and percussion. It is a musical duet between a pianist and an intelligent interactive biocomputer. The biocomputer listens to the piano and produces musical responses during the performance. The responses are played on percussion instruments and on the piano by the pianist. The piano is prepared with electromagnetic actuators positioned inside the instrument to vibrate its strings. Electromagnetic actuators are also used to vibrate percussion instruments.

Random Rhetoric
MADE Group (GR)
“Random Rhetoric“ refers to computerized practices in politics, which are carried out through computers under the norm that political ideas operate as an outcome of mechanized processes and statistics, aiming at the absolute persuasion, the seduction of the audience, allured from the representation of a machine mimicking a human being.

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”.

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.

The Step into Space Garden
Leiden University (NL)
The Step into Space Garden is a journey of discovery through the story of space and your part in it. It presents online and in person events bring together space sciences and arts, through exhibitions and participatory activities with a focus on projects by and for youth.

Finding Amir / From Jerusalem to the Judaea Desert, Israel
Musrara, the Naggar School of Art and Society (IL)
The day that Covid19 sent us all into isolation, Amir Meir, a member of the Musrara Sonic Art Research Group׳ announced he was going to spend the quarantine in one of the many caves in the Judean Desert near Jerusalem and disappeared ever since. With the aid of space and sound illusions practices, the film "Finding Amir" tries to touch on the in-depth questions about the imagined realities that lie behind the walls of digital and symbolic representation.

Future Life. Interferences, Alterations, Changes.
Laboral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial (ES)
The artists in this exhibition work with blood and chlorophyll to investigate the connections between human and plant life. They use microbial cultures, robotic clams and sensors to demonstrate the contamination of the oceans; or apply AI algorithms so that something as innocent as a flower can visualize financial speculation. They also engage with the new icons, practices and virtual devices that define the increasingly polarized and radicalized scenarios of online social and cultural ecosystems.

Sensory Orders
ŁAŹNIA Centre for Contemporary Art (PL)
The Ars Electronica Garden Gdańsk, hosted by ŁAŹNIA Contemporary Art Centre, features Sensory Orders, a project examining the different orders of sensemaking taking place under our (current) conditions of extreme precariousness and uncertainty.

remote/displaced
Äänen Lumo (FI), Aalto University (FI), quietSpeaker (FI)
remote/displaced allows for an immersive exploration of a virtualized physical space: Öljysäiliö 468, a vast, decommissioned oil tank in East Helsinki. It takes the shape of a small collection of brief immersive audio-visual visits to this special remote place, exploring ways to listen to the encounter between sound, technology, space and landscape, as it emerges like a precarious ecosystem, where the boundaries between natural and artificial are constantly renegotiated and deformed by technology.

Chronicles of an Art and Science Collaboration, Otaniemi-Espoo, Finland
Aalto University (FI)
The project highlights the use of autoethnographic narrative as tool for artistic and design research. It brings together self-reflections from three scientists who participated in an art and science collaboration dealing with the use of bio-cellulose for art and design purposes. Through their stories we learn about what inspired them to follow careers in science and how the making of a contribution to sustainability and the good of humankind sustains their work objectives.

Uncertain Practices
Aalto University (FI)
Uncertainty requies that one be able to cope with doubt, something that 2020 took to unusual lengths. uncertainty is also the basis for experimental art practices. The Aalto Garden presents three artists ―Koray Tahiroğlu, Laura Beloff and Andy Best― working through AI, music, artificial biology and an art-science network platform through studio visits, talks and a performance. The Aalto Garden events are produced by Aalto Studios at Aalto University.

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.

WE ARE DATA
Cairotronica (EG)
WE ARE DATA came as a response to a rising responsibility placed on "technology" as a tool which facilitates inclusive development and solutions to many challenges currently facing cities like Cairo. This, in turn, raises questions about security, privacy, accountability, bias, agency, transparency, and ethics among many others. Through the We Are Data fellowship, we wanted to encourage dialogue on the complexity of technology and data from the perspective of 6 Egyptian artists.

Speculating on the Future
Centre for Fine Arts (BOZAR) (BE)
BOZAR explores the role of scientific and technological research as an engine for creativity. The meeting of science, technology and the arts is the favoured basis for finding innovative responses to the social, ecological, and economic challenges that Europe will be facing in the near future. BOZAR joins the Ars Electronica Festival with its own interpretation of the Kepler’s garden, through the curation of 3 online events under umbrella name "Speculating on the future".