The new needs to be developed. Those who claim that this is always easy are mistaken—just like those who think that this is no fun. Take part in Ars Electronica’s workshops and experience how fun and exciting it is to work on concrete solutions to problems using new technologies. What do you need to bring with you? Lots of energy, unbridled curiosity, plenty of imagination, and an excitement about the future! What you don’t need to bring with you: comprehensive expert knowledge!

For many workshops you have to register in advance (sometimes before the festival starts!). Please note the registration instructions and deadlines for each workshop.

Online Workshops

Ars Electronica AIxMusic Online Hackathon
Philippe Esling (FR), Lamtharn Hanoi Hantrakul (TH), Carmine Cella(IT), Edward Tiong (US) and Yishuang Chen (US)

For the occasion of the first online Festival, Ars Electronica will host its first international AIx Music Hackathon as part of the AIxMusic Festival 2020. The hackathon will take place online during the Ars Electronica Festival from 9-13 September 2020. Join our workshops and engage with other hackers, develop prototypes that musicians will be able to integrate, stimulate the use of open data and public resources!

Astrid Mager und Hong Phuc Dang: How to create your own AI device with SUSI.AI - An Open Source Platform for Conversational Web
How to Become a High-Tech Anti-Discrimination Activist Collective

The workshop introduces SUSI components like SUSI’s technology stack, its wiki-like skill editor and hardware prototype; participants work together to create a simple bot, develop new skills and test them. A reflection on data bias and algorithmic discrimination invites to collectively think about creating non-discriminatory digital technologies.

Bioplastics and the New Materiality of Waste
Idil Akdos (NO)

How do we dispose of new materials safely? The CitiComPlastic team investigate how bioplastic waste can be safely transformed into compost. Join them to discuss how new materiality interfaces with environmental issues, and how we need to change our practices, structures, policies and perspectives to address this.

CNMAT ODOT
John MacCallum(USA), Jeff Lubow (USA) 

In this workshop, we will provide a brief, practical introduction to odot, a dynamic, multi-paradigm programming environment that operates on Open Sound Control. Developed at CNMAT beginning in 2007, odot has evolved into a powerful and robust suite of tools useful in a variety of contexts, from gesture signal processing to computer-aided composition. During this workshop, we will discuss the current state of the package and the future of the project.

CoderDojo
CoderDojo Linz (AT)

The CoderDojo is a club for children and young people who want to learn programming and have fun doing it. In regular meetings, they learn how to write code, develop websites or program games and apps.

create your world space tour: Hacking Humans for Space and STEAM in Space

In partnership with spaceEU, the create your world festival comes directly into your classroom. Under the title “create your world: space TOUR” we can offer you two popular workshops for free. The contents are about future issues as well as competencies such as critical thinking and solution-oriented action. Space serves as a source of inspiration and communication.

Doris Allhutter: “When I encountered discriminating IT-systems and did not want to take it anymore” - deconstructing affective entanglements in society-technology relations
How to Become a High-Tech Anti-Discrimination Activist Collective

This workshop uses the deconstructive method of mind scripting to understand the grip that even technologies that we reject may have on us. Using our own memories as an experimental resource we will explore how discrimination and privilege materialize in our practices. This aims at developing collective agency and activisms.

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.

future walk
Bettina Gangl (AT), Birgit Pölz (AT), Helmut Doblhofer (AT) –TeilnehmerInnen Virtual Office FAB Linz (AT)

The young people at the Virtual Office have thought about autonomy and how automated processes and AI will influence our future lives. Through different strategies, they will visualize their fantasies, dreams and fears. They share their thoughts and future visions in an augmented reality walk.

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.

LAB ON STAGE (Adriana Torres Topaga, Martyna Lorenc and Andrea Maria Handler): Phantom Data in our bodies and imagination
How to Become a High-Tech-Anti-Discrimination Activist Collective

This workshop undertakes a performing arts’ approach. Our departure is the embodiment of imagination and perceptual processes. With somatic exercises and performative games, we notice the data flowing in from our bodies: sensation, image, emotion or memory. Imagination has its own training dataset - therefore a specific priming/bias/imprint. We look for practices of becoming aware of HOW we imagine things and what escapes our field of attention.

Loss of the Night
Helga Kuechly, Chris Kyba (DE)

The Loss of the Night team explains how light pollution affects our view of the night sky, and how our experience can be transformed into data. The presentation will kick-off a 24-hour global observation, where teams around the globe will tune in to show us what the night sky is like in their location, with the help of the Loss of the Night app.

Meet the S+T+ARTS Community: Building Open Source Platforms
Joseph Klatt (US), Sören Lex (AT)

Precious Plastic and Precious Plastic Universe, started by industrial designer Dave Hakkens in 2013, is one of those platforms: focused on the reduction of plastic waste through sharing an open source toolkit of technologies and ideas, it has become a global movement of 80.000 people connected by the same passion and vision.

Meter machen
Maria Anna Eckerstorfer, Sabine Touzimsky-Köstler, Wolfgang Schreibelmayr, Lisa Wieder/ Kunstuniversität Linz, Projekt Abteilung Bildnerische Erziehung (AT)

Keeping 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 at kunstuni.linz.metermachen.

Nushin Isabelle Yazdani und Internet Teapot (Karla Zavala und Adriaan Odendaal): [d/r]econstructing AI - dreams of visionary fiction and zine-making
How to Become a High-Tech-Anti-Discrimination Activist Collective

With this workshop we investigate the structures behind algorithmic decision making systems, discuss why their design is normative, and how AI systems reinforce structural discrimination. We embark on a speculative journey and discuss how to design to create a more just world. Which artists inspire us? Which values are important to us? We want to collect our thoughts and creative outputs in a zine.

robodrum

The robodrum project is a robotic setup consisting of 4 KUKA robotic arms equipped with drums, which doesn’t aim to replicate a human performance exactly, nor to be better or faster than one. Instead, it becomes an algorithmic system that allows visitors to leave acoustic traces.

Schools and the Science of Air Pollution
Sonja Grossberndt (NO)

Together with teachers and students, the team from NILU shows us how to make low cost air quality sensors, and how to best use them to investigate air quality.

Sonic Heritage of Inner City Barcelona
Marc Aguilar and Víctor Jiménez (ES)

Bit Lab Cultural Cooperative work on Noise Maps with residents of Raval to gather audio recordings using audio moths placed around the city, and learn how to best investigate urban noise.

STEAM Popup Lab
JKU Linz School of Education (AT)

STEAM Popup Lab is a virtual journey to understand the meaning of patterns all around us. Patterns are everywhere, from fractals in nature to blood vessels in the human body, through the oscillating signals produced by the sensors of a phone. You can control robots, fold origami patterns, measure the signal of a playground swing, be part of a live chemistry lab session, and more.

Street Spectra – Join the Streetlights Hunting!
Lucía García (ES)

Turn your smartphone into a scientific instrument using a cheap diffraction grating. The Street Spectra citizen science project lets you get surprising pictures of the colourful spectra produced by the streetlamps in your neighborhood.

Tagtool Connect

Bei ihrem vierten Auftritt beim Festival Ars Electronica präsentieren OMAi die erste öffentliche Online-Multiplayer-Tagtool-Session, bei der sich ausgewählte internationale Künstler*innen über das Internet zusammenschließen, um spontane Projektionskunst zu schaffen.

Tired Moths and Quiet Stars
Sibylle Schroer (DE)

The 'Crime Scene’ Streetlight project works with citizens and schools to research the effect of the design of street lamps on flying insect populations. Join the team at Brandenburg maker-hub Verstehbahnhof, where local teenagers will be gathering data about pollution; before touring the four Tatort Streetlight locations and learning how to identify flying insects.

What is Noise? Interdisciplinary Discussion
Marc Aguilar and Víctor Jiménez (ES)

The team behind Noise Maps invite international experts in noise and sound to discuss our attitudes to noise, its effects and affect, and our agency in shaping soundscapes in this panel discussion with time for audience questions.

Meet the S+T+ARTS Community: Art & Science Collaborations
Ingeborg Reichle (AT), Michael Sauer (AT), Robertina Šebjanič (SI), Gjino Šutić (HR)

When artists, scientists and scientific research institutions join forces on collaborative projects, the collision of methods often leads to new and exciting perspectives for both the artistic and scientific practice.

A new moon landing
Mehak Sarang

We are going to the moon again, and this time, to stay. But how should we do it this time and do it right?

A sketchnote-workshop online - our experience

Participatory workshops with students offer exciting new perspectives for scientific communication, but what happens when they have to be done remotely? In this online seminar we will explore the challenges and opportunities provided by shifting a Sketchnote workshop with students to an online format.

Art for Future: CO-IMAGINATIONS and CO-PRODUCTIONS for TOMORROW’S WORLD
Filmuniversity Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF (DE), Institute for Art and Innovation (DE)

Workshop - The zone that enables life and makes the planet unique is thinner than previously thought. How should we shape the future positively when conventional visions mainly depict hopeless and bleak dystopias? What we collectively want, what we can imagine, is strongly shaped by the media that surrounds us in our visual-addictive century. Can we imagine futures that serve the common good as well as the regeneration of the planet? How can we create synergies to work less, but be productive together?

Beside the Nibelungen bridge & Oribokit: Gardening for Robots
Studio Matthew Gardiner (AU)

Wherever you are today and whenever you may have sat or stood somewhere, late late late at night, in Linz, this work is for you, this work invites you use our AR gadgets to place a Wurststand in your town, or place a Leberkässemmel on your plate at home. Share a post and write a short memory of a day (or night) at an Ars Electronica Festival.

BIOMETRIC MIRROR
Lucy McRae, Natasha Greenhalgh, Dr Niels Wouters

Biometric Mirror is an immersive and at times controversial installation that blends the act of casually glancing at one’s reflection with modern algorithmic perspectives on facial perfection. The artwork explores the accuracy and flaws of artificial intelligence and the ‘uncanny valley’ of algorithmic perfection and its potential black mirror outcomes.

Can we do the same with less - AI in 64 Kb
Philippe Esling (FR)

This hands-on workshop for the AIxMusic Hackathon by Philippe Esling (FR) introduces techniques for lightweight AI, demonstration of embedded technologies and a 64 Kb competition for an AIxMusic hackathon project challenging the current limits of AI and inspired by the Demoscene and the 64Kb competitions.

Citizens' Think-in on Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is playing a growing role in our lives. Machine learning tools help determine the ads you see online, the news you read and the products you purchase. Every time we send a text, use a credit card or sync a wearable device we are sharing personal information about ourselves. But what are the social consequences of AI? How is our information being used? Who is setting the policies and regulation? And how can AI affect our privacy and civil liberties?

COSA Connector Tour Part 1
Everest Pipkin (US)

Engage with the first of three playlists from our COSA Connectors, exploring open-source tools for artists. We have curated useful selections from across the internet of free software to help you express your creative side. The guided tours will focus on what the tool can do, what kinds of projects you might use it for, and quick tips and tricks for getting started.

COSA Connector Tour Part 2
Aren Davey (US)

Engage with the second of three playlists from our COSA Connectors, exploring open-source tools for artists. We have curated useful selections from across the internet of free software to help you express your creative side. The guided tours will focus on what the tool can do, what kinds of projects you might use it for, and quick tips and tricks for getting started.

COSA Connector Tour Part 3
shawné michaelain holloway (US)

Engage with the third of three playlists from our COSA Connectors, exploring open-source tools for artists. We have curated useful selections from across the internet of free software to help you express your creative side. The guided tours will focus on what the tool can do, what kinds of projects you might use it for, and quick tips and tricks for getting started.

COSA Connectors Live
Aren Davey, Everest Pipkin, shawné michaelain holloway

The three COSA Connectors will come together in a Livestream to talk about creative open-source software tools. They will discuss the series so far, talk about tools they would like to see created, and how they use the tools for their personal work. We will take questions from the viewers via the live-chat, including questions about using other tools and suggestions for future episodes.

Dance the distance
Ariella Vidach (IT), Claudio Prati (CH), Paolo Solcia (CH), Riccardo Santalucia (IT), Sebastiano Barbieri (IT), Francesco Luzzana (IT), Giovanni Landi (IT)

Live Guided Tour in a Dance Virtual Studio. MEET’s second project Dance the distance is a live guided tour through a virtual dance studio. Participants as avatars will be able to meet the virtual dancers and join an open rehearsal for a VR dance performance in progress.

Digital Drag 
Jeremy Bailey (US) 

Face filters are widely used. In the last months we have been online in front of the camera more than ever. The question is what face-filter to wear. Choose fabulous looks using the latest tools tips and tricks to augment reality Transgress and queer your identity, become a digital drag unicorn or whatever Nxt you can imagine. Famous New Media Artist Jeremy Bailey will fly you through step by step to create and perfect your own AR look, so you can stand out from the crowd at your upcoming zoom party or corporate webinar. Let’s all become famous new media artists! 

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.

HOLD ON TO THE GOOD THINGS, IMAGINE THE BEST THINGS

An opportunity to reflect on COVID-19 and its effects on society, and speculate on what comes next. What roles do science, technology and art play here?

Interplanetary Time, Communication, and Longevity
Che-wei Wang, Sands Fish

When distance is measured by light years, how do we learn from the past and make decisions for the future?

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. 

Live Program of Telluric Vibrations, UCLA Botanical Gardens – Los Angeles

Enjoy the extensive live Program of Telluric Vibrations, UCLA Botanical Gardens – Los Angeles

ORCHIDEA with Composer and Lead Researcher at CNMAT
Carmine Cella

Carmine Cella is available to host a live online demonstration/workshop for ORCHIDEA, a framework for static and dynamic computer-assisted music orchestration. Orchestration consists largely of choosing combinations of sounds, instruments, and timbres that support the narrative of a piece of music. The ORCHIDEA project assists composers during the orchestration process by automatically searching for the best combinations of orchestral sounds to match a target sound, after embedding it in a high-dimensional feature space.

Oribokit: Gardening for Robots
Matthew Gardiner (AU)

Robotic Origami Workshop with Matthew Gardiner. ’Oribokit: Gardening for Robots‘  introduces a new artscience kit by Ars Electronica Futurelab researcher Matthew Gardiner. The kit allows you to make your own robotic garden at home. The assembled kit grafts onto a tree branch and is designed to minimise material usage and maximise modular recyclability for robotic origami applications. Kits include 1,2 or 3 oribotic blossoms featuring easy-to-fold laser-cut paper, servo motors, drive wires, and Arduino compatible STM32 microcontroller plus open-source firmware.

Performance and Workshop: Calming the Sea - Sketch 2b
Christoph Killian, UCLA ArtSci Center Artist in Residence

We will play with multichannel near-simultaneity, exploiting transmission latencies and temporal offsets, experiencing destructive and constructive interferences, – overlapping, amplification and extinction of waves in a global disconcert.

Push My Buttons: Sequence All. 

Hacking Numeric Keyboards  Workshop on how to hack a keyboard and turn it into a step sequencer or any other conceivable controller for synthesizers. We may undertake this transformation in such a way that no screen is required, creating a direct link between keyboard and sound operation, strongly relying on the musician's hearing and memory. The focus will be placed on the conception of musical interfaces and their implementation in different hardware. 

Rethinking alive as material
Rūta Spelskytė (LT)

The toolkit is designed to rethink alive as material. To think of the ways we can use nature, create tools out of it, imagine or train plant and animal features, construct their development in the future, and on the other hand – how to take a moment to stop and just appreciate it.

Scratch-Introduction: Rocket launch!

You can`t get to space without the help of computers – so here’s an introduction for children (10-14 years) who want to learn programming. Via the free online platform Scratch we will animate an interactive rocket launch.

SEAWEED SALON
Lichen Kelp, Jessie French

A two-part workshop series by the Seaweed Appreciation Society International that invites you on a field trip to another world - an alternate seaweed reality, where edible algae bioplastics are mixed up alongside refreshing seaweed cocktails. By speculating on a radically sustainable seaweed future, we will be asking if biomutualism can play a part in our everyday lives in the future. A radical sustainable seaweed intervention has never felt more urgent.

Space in the classroom? - It's not rocket science!

Everybody loves space, but how can teachers include space topics in class? This online seminar offers simple experiments as supplements to “normal” STEM-lessons and introduces extracurricular learning centers that offer deeper dives.

Supraspectives
Quadrature (DE)

Audiovisual installation, developed with local (citizen) science and astronomy community during an Art-and-Science Residency at the Medialab of Tabakalera, Spain.

Tabakalera San Sebastian and Ars Electronica Linz
Tabakalera (ES)

Tabakalera is celebrating together with Ars Electronica its 5 years celebration. This installation will be the centerpiece of the program to celebrate the fifth anniversary, during the weekend of Sept. 11 and 12.

Tech-ila Master Craftsman
Oficina de Visitante y Convenciones (OFVC), Cámara Nacional de la Industria del Tequila (CNIT), Zonaga and Mad Machina

The master class is an approach to the materials, hands and stories behind each Tequila Máster "artisan", a product made by years of history and essence accompanied by new technological resources that will make understanding the future of How do we produce, transmit and collect culture? How do we create ancestral products for the future? How do we mold our worldview into an object?

The Aqua_forensic Workshops at the Adriatic Garden

With it, we wish to help illuminate the human impact on our waters at the micro / macro level and provide a guideline to the fascinating world of aquatic flora, fauna and minerals and its plight. The aqua_forensic project is known for its special devotion and affinity to participatory engagement through workshops. We all have the capacity to pause, listen, observe and recognize the diversity and quality of the present environment. The aqua_forensic aims to encourage global and local audiences to familiarize themselves with the topics of water pollution and climate change, as well as actively engage in community work on these issues through citizen science oriented workshops. Scientific environments provide the sophisticated tools needed to undertake analysis and build predictive ecological models.

The Birth of Venus
Brigita Kasperaitė (DE/LT)

While in the past electroconvulsive therapy was used in very questionable ways, we can admit one thing, the reality is questionable in itself. And while the artist Brigita Kasperaitė explores the natural and synthetic ways of electrical discharges and how they might affect the surroundings, she is also interested in knowing and experiencing that electricity is everywhere - as well as our bodies.

VoV Workshop: Making Art from the Brain to the Blockchain

Participating “Brain Workers” are invited to create their VoV token by shaping values through neurodesign in the Brain Factory. VoVs are immaterial assets, as well as brain-designed 3D models. Brain Workers propose reifications of the abstract models as artworks. This is how they start to make sense out of a frozen value.

Wellbeing in Extreme Environment
Maggie Coblentz

How do we adapt to extreme conditions and how we care for each other? In the time of pandemic and isolation, can we learn from astronauts and people who have lived through hardships?

Workshop: Data Garden
Eli Joteva and Zeynep Abes

In this workshop you will learn the art of photogrammetry, volumetric collage and shared virtual spaces.

Workshop: Diffraction and Wave-Particle Duality and Imaging Techniques
Sam Lilak

This workshop invites you to understand the duality of nature and utilize its interactions to achieve atomic resolution. You will be introduced to scale, waves and wave-particle duality, optical microscopes and UV-Vis spectroscopy, electron microscopy and diffraction, atomic imaging and scanning probe microscopy.

Workshop: Follow the Fibers: Weaving as a Method of Inquiry
Monica LoCascio, Artist and Member of ArtSci Collective

Fascia and Mycelium through the lens of Anni Albers and weaving

Workshop: Houdini Software Intro
Debra Isaac

In this workshop, we will create a rocky 3D object, fracture and shatter it, and then emit particles with forces. Learn the power and flexibility of Houdini’s Procedural and non destructive node based 3d software that excels in using both raw data and generative art.

Workshop: Music and Quantum Mechanics
Dr. James Gimzewski

We explore the relationship between music specifically harmonic sound resonances and quantum mechanics. The Schrodinger equations which are used to describe zero point energy and energy quantization are similar to the solutions for a guitar string in one dimension called the particle in a box. In two dimensions equivalent to drum modes. The electrons in an atom are equivalent to three dimensional solutions. I also introduce quantum tunneling as leaky strings and provide examples in nanotechnology.

Workshop: Mycelial Landscapes: How Fungi Shape the World and Take the Shape of the Future
Kaitlin Bryson

This workshop explores the incredible world of fungi from their ecology to their biochemistry and explores how these amazing organisms shape and make the world around us. We will also learn about how we can work with fungi helping them take shapes and forms for building sustainable futures. We will do a simple exercise of making mycelium hands to stretch our notions of touch and physicality during the time of the pandemic.

Workshop: Pinecone Hygrometer, Seed Dispersal, and Fire Ecology
Helen Huang

In this lecture we will explore how seeding of plants respond to environmental triggers like fire and humidity changes. We will also learn some basic concepts in scientific research and how we can sense our environment through the observation of the plants around us.

Workshop: Psychobiotonic: Microbiome Anthropothagy
Clarissa Ribeiro

Imagine a fictional scenario in which you can choose one personality to ‘embody’ a time having access to encapsulated microbiome samples (mixed cultures i.e. microbial associations or communities) of donors that have specific personality types. “Transplanting the Self: microbiome anthropophagy” (2018-present) is a reflection on the limits of microbiome manipulation inviting the online audience to become ‘personality donors’ in a collaborative performance.

Workshop: Remote Sensing the Red Planet
Shane Houchin

Remote sensing is the acquisition of information about an object, area, or phenomenon without making physical contact. Typically performed by satellite or aircraft that measure the reflected or emitted electromagnetic radiation from a surface. Applications of remote sensing include, Geology, Hydrology, Agriculture, Conservation, Urban Planning, Transportation, Glaciology, Forestry, Ecology, to mention a few.

Workshop: Sidewalk Herbarium
Alvaro Azcarraga with Terry Huang

We will be reconnecting with our local environments by collecting and identifying plant specimens from your neighborhood/sidewalk.

Workshop: Solidarity Through Sound and Time
Ivana Dama and Clinton Van Arnam

In this workshop, participants would have the unique chance to reconsider their ideas of what constitutes sound and music compositions. Throughout the day we are exposed to countless amounts of sounds and noises, but it is only valuable if we can isolate these specific sounds and separate their relationship from emory to their pure tonal structure.

Workshop: WATERBODIES
Claudia Jacques and Victoria Vesna

This workshop will introduce you to a variety of issues around water bodies around the world. Participants will develop and add their stories and / or artwork or scientific research related to a stream, lake, sea, ocean. Communities will form around specific water bodies that will become guardians and share up to date information about the status.