Garden of … Knowledge for Humanity

Ars Electronica Research Institutes

An initiative of the Ars Electronica Futurelab is represented by the Ars Electronica Research Institutes, consisting of the Ars Electronica Research Institute Knowledge for Humanity (by Eveline Wandl-Vogt) and the Ars Electronica Research Institute Auditory Cultures (by Werner Jauk). This organizational form acts as an open membrane for Ars Electronica, allowing closer collaborations with the academic world. After its first incarnation as an Ars Electronica Research Institute last year, Eveline Wandl-Vogt’s Ars Electronica Research Institute Knowledge for Humanity will also host a program at this year’s festival.

Garden of … Knowledge for Humanity

Garden of … Knowledge for Humanity reflects on the most recent work by the Ars Electronica Research Institute Knowledge for Humanity, in its global and unique context bridging the gap between academic knowledge and socially relevant applications.

In this years’ interactions, the mission statements of last year are introduced as live experiments that you can be an active part of.

The presented work is focused on the following three core areas:

Digital humanism and critical reflections on technology
Knowledge for Emergency – COVID19 related experiments and interactions
Accelerating /academic/ knowledge to reach the Sustainable Development Goals

It reflects our approaches:

of Humanity Centered Design (Federico Donelli)
of art-based, experimental knowledge co-creation
against a background of Open Innovation methods and practices / in science.

Garden of … Knowledge for Humanity celebrates the wealth of diversity, addressing various formats and audiences, through:

analogue canvases and interactive visualizations
virtual, participatory interactions
speculative future design experiments

This series of interactions is curated by Eveline Wandl-Vogt and uniquely designed for Ars Electronica Festival 2020, especially against the backdrop of COVID19-related virtualizations.

You are invited on a journey of discovery aiming to drive social, innovation-based activism and to critically reflect on what we call “intelligence” (artificial and human likewise) by stimulating you to join the community of purpose that is Ars Electronica Research Institute Knowledge for Humanity.

Timetable

Program

Creating a New Normal: Arts, Design, Humanities and Social Sciences 4 Emergency?

Eveline Wandl-Vogt, Nirmala Menon, Dario Rodrighiero, Elian Carsenat

Panel discussion: As this virus, and maybe further to come, affects the world and our way of living, we are aiming to explore pioneering research and action based art and design. During the time of social distancing and quarantining, it has become evident that even with the principles of science and technology that provide us with access to practical methods for securing our lives, humanities-based principles and skillsets have played a key role in enabling us to evolve. In light of this, we might want to rethink our approach to future living.

Exponential Mindset: The Skills of an Exponentialist

Niki Ernst, Eveline Wandl-Vogt

A 4-Sessions dive deep into the Exponential Mindset. An interaction series to consider the SDGs from an exponential growth strategies perspective.

Community Creates Mobility: Participatory Speculative Critical Design beyond dream-making for the City.

Eveline Wandl-Vogt, Niki Ernst, Claudia Falkinger, Peter Zehetbauer, Wolfgang Preisinger, Elisabeth Füssl, Penesta Dika, Aleyda Rocha Sepulveda; lightning talk: Jeffrey Schnapp

Co-Envisioning Mobility Infrastructures – The challenges facing cities around the globe are complex and multidisciplinary by nature. Attempting to solve them in conventional linear ways is insufficient for addressing these manifold human-environment relationships that are at the heart of these challenges. Alternative approaches are necessary.

Affordances of spaces

Elena Cologni

Accelerating Knowledge for the SDGs: Life streamed session – The work developed from a two-year long investigation into ‘architectures of difference’, is based on a postcard in sculptor Barbara Hepworth’s collection (circa 1952), in a note she refers to this in terms of the space between people: it’s relational and social aspects. The piece also evolved from considering the punctuations found in our cities’ grounds, and how these contribute to developing a sense of attachment and belonging, which is at the basis of wellbeing (eg. Lived Dialectics, 2016, MuseumsQuartier, Vienna; Seeds of Attachment, 2016/18, New Hall Art Collection, Cambridge).

COVID19 Insights: Mapping Diversity and Community

Dario Rodrighiero, Elian Carsenat, Gabriel Carsenat, Eveline Wandl-Vogt

COVID19 is a fire accelerator. We were using the time of the lockdown to deepen our transnational collaboration and think on how we can apply our knowledge and skills to current real world problems related to the pandemics. This visualization based on the recently developed biocultural diversity index and lexical distances. This work is unpublished up to now and unique.

museum of knowledge science

Eveline Wandl-Vogt, Atiq Hashmi, Andreas Brandner, Louise Deininger

Virtual co-design session – Knowledge is at the heart of sustainable development. The achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals requires therefore effective knowledge management. However, knowledge needs to be understood in regional, societal, historic and cultural context. Art and culture are essential to the understanding of knowledge, specifically when knowledge – and its various aspects and processes – is reflected as a subject of art. Beyond reflecting knowledge, art is also a medium of knowledge, like articles or books.

CURATORIAL A(I)GENTS

metaLAB (at) HARVARD

Eight experiments in the computational curation of collections – Curatorial A(i)gents consists in eight machine-learning-based experiments in and around museum collections and data sets developed by members and affiliates of metaLAB (at) Harvard, an idea foundry, knowledge-design lab, and production studio experimenting in the networked arts and humanities.

Algorithm Inventarium: methoda-thon

Matthew Battles, Max Haarich, Aleyda Rocha Sepulveda, Eveline Wandl-Vogt

Towards Inclusive, Sustainable Futures – The experimental “methodathon” is part of a series of “algorithm inventarium sprints” related to the project Algorithm Inventarium (AI+): diverse co-creation interventions combining action research approaches for accelerating the collaborative auditing of algorithms (e.g. by applying gamification techniques for data awareness, or auditing through interfaces). The aim of this session in connection with the ars electronica festival community is to identify, co-create and/or discuss specific methods, protocols and experiments for participatory research in the spirit of citizen science and community-based research in Vienna.

Algorithm Inventarium: The Greater Good Ethics Canvas

Eveline Wandl-Vogt, Henry Dobson, Max Haarich

Towards Responsible, Humane Technologies – In this interaction we are introducing the “Greater Good Ethics Canvas” to be used for the development of Humanity Centered Technology.