Conferences, Lectures, Talks

As always the Ars Electronica Festival offers a multitude of conferences, lectures and talks, which are featured widely this year. Alongside with well-known programs like the STARTS Day or the Prix Forum you can discover many new formats like the Home Delivery Conference or the Art Thinking Forum.

Conferences, Lectures, Talks

AILab

at the 2020 Ars Electronica Festival

The European ARTificial Intelligence Lab emerged from the European Digital Art and Science Network, a creative collaboration between scientific institutions, Ars Electronica and cultural partners throughout Europe that unites science and digital art. The European ARTificial Intelligence Lab takes up this theme and addresses the visions, expectations and fears that we associate with artificial intelligence.

AIxMusic

This year, the AIxMusic Festival focuses on a deep insight into the latest research and artistic practices developed in conjunction with artificial intelligence and paying special attention to its potential to facilitate networked remote collaboration among musicians.

Conflicts in IP & copyrights in art & science collaboration

In interdisciplinary collaboration, the creation of an appropriate legal framework is essential not only for the cooperation during a project but also for the exploitation of innovative results.

COVID-19 Crisis

Walter Ötsch (AT), Renata Schmidtkunz (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.

Creative Question Challenge

The Creative Question Challenge (CQC) is a new brainstorming format in which speakers explore and present creative questions in a 30-minute dialogue. The CQC brings together two speakers from different disciplines and backgrounds, with a facilitator called Catalyst to create questions for the world to ponder within a 30-minute time limit.

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.

DIRTY LIVES BETTER

Barbara Ungepflegt (AT), Elsbeth Wallnöfer (IT)

Since December 2017 Barbara Ungepflegt has been Minister for Homelandtrash and International Affairs. Ungepflegt considers urgent measures to preserve the constantly disappearing homeland dirt until it is too late for Team Austria, animals and dumplings. In cooperation with Elsbeth Wallnöfer, chairwoman in the home country, the Minister will present in detail the program of DIRTY LIVES BETTER at the 2020 Ars Electronica Festival.

Expanded Animation

In collaboration with the Upper Austria University of Applied Sciences’ Hagenberg Campus, the 8th Expanded Animation symposium carries on a process launched in 2013: to map the wide-ranging domain of animated worlds of imagery beyond well-trodden paths. The symposium stays the course originally set at its inception, and presents theoretical positions and perspectives from the art world, the R&D field and the industrial sector.

FEM

Women in Art, Science and Technology

Techniques for the automatic generation of music – which have long been focused on systems ruling the score – are now being deployed at all levels of sound representation: signal, gesture, symbol, form. Sound synthesis using deep networks constitutes a radical break with conventional modelling approaches. How do composers handle these emerging possibilities?

Focus:Archive

The Focus:Archive section summarizes program items that take place at the festival this year in connection with archives.

Future Humanity Journey

A day in 2040: what would our day look like in 20 years? Future Humanity Journey is an experimental workshop. Four innovators created a scenario of future humanity to better understand how humanity will develop and evolve.

Home Delivery Forum

Home Delivery is a full day conference with a focus on global pandemic responses. Digital platforms, contents and approaches which have evolved from the pandemic crisis – emerging from the network and made manifest through it – will be presented. Nothing seems more important at the moment than to connect and maintain intensive intellectual, artistic and human contact, exchange and dialogue.

Inside Festival

The Inside Festival series focuses on the research and work of different guests with regard to the festival topics democracy and autonomy. Among the guest are Joanna Bryson, Lorena Jaume Palasì and Renata Schmidtkunz who will discuss with Gerfried Stocker, the artistic director of Ars Electronica.

Key Notes

Ars Electronica (AT)

In this edition of Key Notes, the focus will be on extraordinary female visionaries that are forming the very world we are inhabiting now and for generations to come. Thought leaders in the digital ethics of AI and bridge-builders with business will give insights on current research, artistic projects, and experiments.

How to Become a High-Tech Anti-Discrimination Activist Collective

IFG-LIT (AT)

New technologies have penetrated all aspects of our lives and promise a wide range of improvements and efficiencies. Contrary to general perception, though, the algorithms on which these technologies are based are neither neutral nor do they treat everyone equally.

Prix Ars Electronica

at the 2020 Ars Electronica Festival

For over three decades, the Prix Ars Electronica has been one of the world's most coveted awards for digital media art. With the award-winning works of international artists serving as trend barometers, it provides an inspiring, up-to-date and forward-looking insight into the interface between art, technology and society.

STARTS Day

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.

STUDIOTOPIA

STUDIOTOPIA is a European initiative that seeks to activate the collaborative and interdisciplinary expertise required to face these future challenges by implementing an inverse art and science residency model. Scientists from diverse disciplines responded to an open call to work alongside and learn from leading European artists. In Creative Question Challenges at  this year’s Ars Electronica, future problems will be explored and future solutions hypothesized with the broadcast beginnings of a 17-month conversation between artists and scientists.

Symposium “Perspektiven politischer Bildung”

Arbeiterkammer OÖ (AT), Pädagogische Hochschule OÖ (AT)

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is omnipresent, without us always being aware of it. For many years now, it has been making our everyday lives easier, for example when cell phones are unlocked by means of face recognition or when individual advertising guides us through the jungle of the Internet. AI can manipulate us humans. Can it thus become a danger to democracy? The first signs of this apparent development were brought about by the brexite vote or the US presidential elections, for example.