The Wild State

Campus

Wed Sep 9, 2020, 12:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Thu Sep 10, 2020, 12:00 pm - 10:30 pm
Fri Sep 11, 2020, 10:00 am - 10:30 pm
Sat Sep 12, 2020, 10:00 am - 10:00 pm
Sun Sep 13, 2020, 12:00 pm - 8:00 pm
All times are given in Central European Summer Time (CEST / UTC +2).
University for Art and Design Linz

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”.

Program

Agora Digitalis 

Agora Digitalis is the Interface Cultures’ meeting point during the 2020 Campus Exhibition. The general idea behind it is to create an informal setting where students, (future) makers and future students can meet and become acquainted with Interface Cultures. Agora Digitalis is a physical and virtual place where everyone should be able to share and express their ideas

Bring Your Own Art
You!

Bring Your Own Art is the open stage for artists, students and researchers, who want to present their current works in 5-10 minutes, after the ‘first come, first present’ principle – Livestream.

CRAFTING FUTURES
Growing Together 

Crafting Futures shows works by students of the bachelor course Design: Tech.Tex, teachers training for technical and textile works, which were created during the last year. Its focus is on the active examination of questions concerning the future of craft, the craft of the future and the crafting of futures.

Catalogue Presentation: FASER FADEN FIKTION | Märchen, Mythen und Materie
Tech.Tex, Robert Angerer, Michaela Haager, Sofie Lüftinger, Neriman Polat, Andreas Schmied, Alessandra Steiner

New objects, discourses and visions have emerged from the process of spinning fabrics into fibres and spinning them, in turn, into fictions, and these have all been documented as travel guides for future travelers. The Ars Electronica Center will also be showing works that have emerged from the project Märchen, Mythen und Materie (Fairy Tales, Myths and Matter), directed by Johanna Pichlbauer and Isabel Prade.

Fashion & Technology presents IN THE LAB
Liquid Objects, Disobedient Materials

The exhibition takes a surprising look at the sustainable, inclusive and democratic future of fashion. Waiting to be discovered are the inner life of virtual bodies, seamless garments made from experimental jacquard fabrics and second-hand clothing that dissolves and reconfigures.  IN THE LAB makes innovative processes visible and invites visitors to observe new shapes and materials as they grow.

Gallery Performances III
Jaskaran Anand, Vicky Michalopoulou, Razieh Kooshki & Vahid Qaderi, Afra Sönmez & Nursinem Aslan

In-between Privacy, Happy 365, Vivid Q, Onisma – Livestream.

Gallery Performances II
Jaskaran Anand, Alejandro Quiñones Roa, Octavian Albu

In-between Privacy, Cascada, Reconnect

Gallery Performances I
Alejandro Quiñones Roa, Razieh Kooshki & Vahid Qaderi, Afra Sönmez & Nursinem Aslan

Cascada, Vivid Q, Onisma – Livestream

Portrait of a Generative Memory
Indiara Di Benedetto (IT)

In this demonstrative performance the artist is demonstrating the project “Portrait of a Generative Memory”, that focuses on the subjective interpretation of personal memories about a human face.

INTERFACING HAUPTPLATZ

In this unique location, the facade of Hauptplatz 8 turns into a virtual window that opens to show the world beyond the square. On several evenings during the Ars Electronica Festival, after the sun has set, different audiovisual projects are projected onto the media facade, inviting festival visitors and passers-by to enjoy and interact with them from near and far. And though originally conceived as an installation planned solely for THE WILD STATE during Ars Electronica, we might see it again in the future.  

Intimacy, Embodiment & Technology
Jaskaran Anand, Indiara di Benedetto, Nomi Sasaki, Octavian Albu, Gabriele Ragusa

In-between Privacy, Track-track: Let’s Follow the cat!, Reconnect, Untitled at the Strafsachengallery – Livestream.

Keynote Janina Loh
Janina Loh (DE), Thomas Matzner

Loh’s research interests lie in the field of trans- and posthumanism (espe- cially critical posthumanism), robot ethics, feminist philosophy of technology, responsi- bility research, Hannah Arendt, theories of judgement, and ethics in the sciences.

Keynote Lynn Hershman Leeson
Lynn Hershman Leeson (US)

In this lecture, Lynn Hershman Leeson will give an overview of her work, particularly related to cyborgs, from 1966’s Breathing Machines , to 2018’s Antibody and 2020’s Gravity’s End.

Keynote Thomas Macho
Thomas Macho (AT), Gloria Meynen

Since 2016 Thomas Macho has been director of the International Research Centre for Cultural Studies (IFK) at the University of Art and Design Linz in Vienna. In 2019 he was awarded the Sigmund Freud Prize for scholarly prose by the Ger- man Academy for Language and Poetry, and in 2020 the Austrian State Prize for Cultural Journalism.

Latency Now, Telematic Improv Workshop
Theatre of Making #4 

The interdisciplinary workshop series Theatre of Making (TOM) focuses on real-time audiovisual improvisation by exploring how continually evolving artistic methods, media and processes overlap and are reconfigured to unfold a constant flow of visible, audible, and experiential events. These cross-media jam sessions engage all senses and abilities, synthesizing processes and outcomes into a live, durational, closely-knit total work of art.

Leonardo Publishing & Mentoring Workshop
Danielle Siembieda, Erica Hruby, Sheila Pinkel

Leonardo/the International Society for Arts, Sciences and Technology (Leonardo/ISAST) is a global enterprise think-tank creating inroads to imagine a better world, regenerate hope for humanity and achieve breakthrough solutions to our most complex problems. 

Metaverse

A metaverse for sound art and music EXHIBITION & CONCERTS.

Meter machen
Maria Anna Eckerstorfer (AT), Sabine Touzimsky-Köstler (AT), Lisa Wieder (AT), Wolfgang Schreibelmayr (AT) / Department of Art Education / Bildnerische Erziehung

Keeping a distance is a very important rule. But as we humans are, situations arise that are hilarious, super funny or totally confusing. At this year’s Ars Electronica Festival we want to collect exactly such scenes. Send us a self-produced photo or a very short text about your experience by mail and follow us on Instagram on @kunstuni.linz.metermachen. So until then – let the penguins dance!

The Post-Pandemic City: a Provisional Profile
Various

Specialists from different design and architecture faculties as the Politecnico di Milano and The University of Art and Design Linz will give a short presentation of their recent research on interventions and strategies for urban spaces in times of a pandemic followed by a discussion about provisional profiles for post-pandemic cities. Moderated by Anne Nigten.

SOUND CAMPUS
Examining the State of Electronic Music and Sound Practice at Academic Institutions

Sound Campus” is a new program oriented towards examining the state of experimental sound practices at universities and research centers. It opens a possibility for students and researchers to present new forms of understanding sonic art to the audience of Ars Electronica Festival. This year’s program, curated by Enrique Tomás, presents uneasy sound performances resonating in the face of a critical present; intrusive music, touching us despite lockdowns.

SOUND CAMPUS day 1

Live: Fantasy Island, A Certain, Christoph Punzmann, Duo 3-Kanal, Reclaiming Time – ElektroMagnetikSpektrum

SOUND CAMPUS day 2

Live: merge and dissolve, FlashRust, Paul Gründorfer, A distributed location performance (2020)

SOUND CAMPUS day 3

Live: TechnoGAN, Trial#1, DJ3XXICA + Shinsekai

A staged conversation
Ann Cotten, Gloria Meynen

Moderation: Gloria Meynen

State of Online Communities
Carla Zamora, Indiara Di Benedetto, Tiia Suorsa, Iosune Sasarate, Smirna Kulenović, Vicky Michalopoulou, Artemis Gryllaki, Rita Graça

COCO-lands, Happy 365, Syster Papyri Magicae, Networks of Care – Livestream.

State of Online Culture
Tiia Suorsa, Balínt Budai, Mario Romera, Pedro Sá Couto, Giulio Interlandi

Under the Rock, #beatthefuckathome, Proof of Consensus, Tactical Watermarks, Designing Interaction for Enactive Storytelling Experiences – Livestream.

State of Intimacy 
Interface Cultures, University of Art and Design Linz

In the field of media art and technology we often discussed, until recently, how to design intimate technology. And the desire to be departing, like Harry Potter, from Platform 9 ¾ seemed to be a major incentive for augmenting and mixing realities. Until last spring, when the University of Art and Design in Linz had to close and a lockdown immersed us all, unwillingly, in a virtual world whilst the physical world seemed to be replaced by daily statistics. This is the context for the Interface Cultures students who worked, for the full 2020 summer semester, in confinement on their projects for this exhibition.

Symposium “Unheimliche Freunde”

Around 1978, a metaphor found its way into English android research that the roboticist Masahiro Mori had defined in 1970: the “uncanny valley”. Robots that resemble humans too much instill fear and terror. Like us, but never familiar, they inhabit the “uncanny valley.”  But today, the uncanny valley has almost disappeared. Thanks to RFID chips, GPS and a wide variety of body sensors, our bodies and identities have themselves become interfaces, mouse pointers and prosthetic hands with which algorithms trace and continue to write our profiles. The valley that Mori dug out between the industrial robot and the Nō mask is now levelled. What remains is a suspicion: that the ghosts and the undead are not only the robots, but ourselves as well..

The Internet Yami-Ichi
Sofia Braga (IT), IDPW (JP) 

Shut down your computer and join the third edition of The Internet Yami-Ichi in Linz! The Internet Yami-Ichi derives from the Japanese for ”Internet Black Market,” but also for ”sickness” and “addiction.” It is a flea market where people consumed by the Internet can share and buy Internet-related things in real life.

Uncanny Agents
Gunter Lösel, Pamela Scorzin, Anna Bromley, Marcus Burkhard

Moderation: Marcus Burkhard

Uncanny Fictions
Jiré Emine Gözen, Barbara Eder, Barbara Eggert, Gloria Meynen

Moderation: Gloria Meynen

The Wild State: Networked 
Exhibition by partner universities of the University of Art and Design Linz

The Wild State: Networked exhibition seeks to leave the state of uncertainty behind us by bringing some of the most recent and compelling contributions to the Hauptplatz in Linz. We are delighted to present works by Master and PhD-students touching on topics related to the truly “Wild State” we are currently in, and the natural processes related to it. 

Project Credits / Acknowledgements

Text: Christa Sommerer & Manuela Naveau
The Wild State Program Team: Christa Sommerer, Manuela Naveau, Julia Nüsslein, Sylvia Leitner, Davide Bevilacqua

THE WILD STATE

Eine Prärie im Wilden Westen, eine futuristische Pirateninsel auf hoher See, tanzende Menschen am Burning Man – welche Bilder entstehen vor eurem inneren Auge, wenn ihr THE WILD STATE hört?

THE WILD STATE

A prairie in the Wild West, a futuristic pirate island on the ocean, people dancing at Burning Man – what images emerge in front of your inner eye when you hear THE WILD STATE?