Inside Festival and The Art of Swarms

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(Linz, 17.08.2021) Fascinating exhibitions, inspiring talks and conferences, theme-specific guided tours, workshops and great concerts with digital and/or classical music, and all of this in Linz and countless other locations around the globe: from September 8 to 12, the Ars Electronica Festival will once again take place as a hybrid event. The thematic starting point for this journey around the world is the call for a “New Digital Deal.” This week, Veronika Liebl (Managing Director of Ars Electronica), Kristina Maurer (Head of European Projects at Ars Electronica) and Laura Welzenbach (Head of Ars Electronica Export) will present festival gardens from around the world. “Inside Festival – Episode 8” will cover the topics of data literacy and prejudice on Aug. 18, 2021, and will present projects from the Ars Electronica Gardens in Utrecht, Amsterdam and Lugano. “Episode 9” on August 19 highlights projects from the Ars Electronica Gardens in Esch-sur-Alzette, Araucanía and Quebec that deal with sustainability and ecology. In addition, selected works by young artists from the “u19 – create your world” pool will be presented in both episodes. On Tuesday, August 17, Peter Holzkorn, key researcher and artist at the Ars Electronica Futurelab, will provide insights into the Ars Electronica Futurelab’s sensational swarm performances with drones and robots as part of the 25th Anniversary Series.

Inside Futurelab: 25th Anniversary Series – Episode 6 – The Art Of Swarms / TUE 17.8.2021 / 6 p.m. CET
The Ars Electronica Futurelab’s luminous Quadrocopter swarm caused quite a stir around the world about nine years ago. Since then, the Ars Electronica Futurelab has already launched a series of other precisely choreographed performances with drones and ground robots. In the sixth episode of the 25th Anniversary Series, key researcher and artist Peter Holzkorn takes you behind the scenes into the technology used in the process and talks about what possibilities the future might hold for the further development of swarms.

Inside Festival – Episode 8: 21 days or 504 hours or 30,240 minutes left until the festival starts / WED 18.8.2021 / 4 p.m. CET
Veronika Liebl (Managing Director of Ars Electronica) and Kristina Maurer (Head of European Projects at Ars Electronica) will dedicate the eighth episode of “Inside Festival” to the topics of data literacy and prejudice. In doing so, they present projects from Gardens in Utrecht, Amsterdam and Lugano that range from digital masked balls to industrial robotics and its values system. An unusual mother-daughter relationship in the future is shown in the animated film “The Click,” which was recognized at the Prix Ars Electronica with an Honorary Mention in the “u19 – create your world” category.

Inside Festival – Episode 9: 20 days or 480 hours or 28,800 minutes left until the festival starts / THU 19.8.2021 / 4 p.m. CET
Veronika Liebl (Managing Director of Ars Electronica) and Laura Welzenbach (Head of Ars Electronica Export) shed light on the topics of sustainability and ecology in the ninth installment of “Inside Festival.” The featured works from the Gardens in Esch-sur-Alzette, Araucanía and Quebec reveal what SmartForests are all about and examine the role of humans in ancient cultural spaces. A short, entertaining animated film shows how students of the Vienna BRG/ORG antonkriegergasse have visually translated the theme “We will save the world” and what aliens have to do with it.

Ars Electronica Festival
On September 18, 1979, the first Ars Electronica Festival saw the light of day in Linz. It was a pilot project that took the emerging digital revolution as an opportunity to inquire into possible futures and to locate this inquiry at the interface of art, technology and society. With this philosophy, which is still valid today, the cyberneticist and physicist Herbert W. Franke (AT), the electronic musician Hubert Bognermayr (AT), the music producer Ulli A. Rützel (AT) and Hannes Leopoldseder (AT), then director of the ORF regional studio in Upper Austria, laid the foundation for the success story of Ars Electronica. Today, more than 40 years later, Ars Electronica is one of the world’s largest hybrid platforms for media art, a festival for digital music, a showcase for creativity and innovation, and a playground for the next generation.

Ars Electronica Home Delivery
“Ars Electronica Home Delivery” is a weekly program that includes Guided Tours of Ars Electronica exhibitions, excursions to Ars Electronica Labs, visits to the Machine Learning Studio, concerts with real-time visualizations, Deep Space LIVE sessions, workshops with engineers and talks with artists and scientists from around the world, as well as offerings for schools, universities and companies. “Ars Electronica Home Delivery” aims to make the artistic-scientific examination of the future accessible to as broad an audience as possible.

Photo:
Digitale Consapevole, Ars Electronica Garden Lugano / photo: Città di Lugano / Printversion

Photo:
Ars Electronica Futurelab: Spaxels over Linz / photo: Martin Hieslmair Printversion