Adriatic Sea, Moscow, Bangkok: A Journey from the Garden of Datasets vs. Mindsets to the Garden of Psych

Press release as PDF
Photo collection Ars Electronica Home Delivery on Flickr
Photo collection Ars Electronica Festival 2020 on Flickr
Website Ars Electronica Home Delivery
Website Ars Electronica Festival

Thursday, August 6, 2020 / 3pm
live on ars.electronica.art/homedelivery

(Linz, 4.8.2020) Ars Electronica 2020 will take place as a journey around the world from September 9 to 13—not in spite of Corona, but because of it. For the first time, the Festival for Art, Technology and Society is inviting visitors not only to Linz but to 120 destinations around the globe. From Tokyo to Johannesburg to L.A., artists, scientists, developers and activists will create hundreds of exhibitions, lectures, talks and workshops aimed at local audiences – “Stay Home, Stay Safe”! Via streams, chats, blogs, social media and Mozilla Hubs, Ars Electronica is linking these programs into a festival that will be a forum for people all over the world once again, even in these times of pandemic. Every week at “Home Delivery: Inside Festival!”, Ars Electronica’s curators and project managers will tell us what there is to be seen and heard, commented on and discussed. This Thursday, August 6, 2020, at 3:00 p.m., Christl Baur (Co-Producer Ars Electronica Festival / Prix / Exhibitions) and Manuela Hillmann (Project Coordination Festival) invite you on a virtual journey that stops in the Adriatic, in Moscow and in Bangkok.

The “Adriatic Garden | aqua_forensic 2.0” in Dubrovnik and Koper
Dubrovnik in Croatia, Koper in Slovenia, and the Adriatic Sea: the scenes of a forensic investigation into how marine flora and fauna suffer from chemical pollutants, such as those from the pharmaceutical industry. As part of this year’s Ars Electronica, the Slovenian Robertina Šebjanič and the Croatian Gjino Šutić are inviting visitors to their “Adriatic Garden | aqua_forensic 2.0.” They will be presenting exhibitions and holding workshops in Dubrovnik, Koper, Ljubljana and Linz. Videos will also give us an opportunity to dive into the world of the sea and listening to the soundscapes under and above the water.

The “Garden of Datasets vs Mindsets” in Moscow
More and more processes of our daily life are being digitalized. The result is huge data sets that are analyzed by algorithms and scanned for patterns – at a speed and in a dimension that are simply inaccessible to our human perception. For the 2020 Ars Electronica Festival, the curator duo Helene Nikonole and Olga Vad are creating the “Garden of Datasets vs Mindsets” in Moscow and inquiring into the boundaries between digital and physical spaces and what the widespread implementation of algorithmic regulation and control tools means for a post-Soviet society like Russia’s. Several generations of artists from different countries who work with new media will be presented. Innovative forms of presentation and interaction between online and offline formats will be used in an exhibition, a one-day conference and a one-day performance program.

The “Psych Garden: Spanning metaphysical geographies” in Bangkok
How do we think about the planet we live on? How about inanimate objects or artificial microorganisms? How do scientists, anthropologists and artists outside the so-called West describe the world they observe? As part of Ars Electronica 2020, Jennifer Katanyoutanat and Scott Kildall invite you to take virtual trips to the “Psych Garden” in Bangkok, where everything revolves around how we experience the world and how our bodies absorb information through our senses.

Ars Electronica 2020
9. – 13. September
A global journey mapping the ‘new‘ world
In Kepler’s Gardens
at JKU Campus, Linz
and 120 other locations worldwide
Ars Electronica 2020 is a journey to measure the ‘new’ world and a journey through “Kepler’s Gardens”, which are located in Linz at the JKU Campus and at 120 other locations worldwide. In the course of this journey, the important questions of our time will be discussed, questions raised by the global corona crisis, and what we can and must do now will be considered. All the issues touched upon are marked by a general UNCERTAINTY and the question of how the crisis will shape and change us as individuals and as a society, us as HUMANITY. Two tensions in particular are in focus: AUTONOMY and DEMOCRACY as well as TECHNOLOGY and ECOLOGY.

Photo:
Kepler Hall, a venue of the Ars Electronica Festival 2020. Fotocredit: Ars Electronica – Robert Bauernhansl / Printversion