Wednesday at last! Ars Electronica 2021 begins, and it starts with an “Education Day”. For good reason: wanting to change something (or in our case having to change something) is one thing, being able to change something is quite another. The question is how we can acquire the skills we need to successfully meet the challenges of our time. The order of the day can only be: We need an (extra-)school education whose structures, content and didactics make contemporary learning possible and prepare young people in the best possible way for a (working) life in the 21st century.

This question is the starting point of the two-day “Symposium Universitas“, with which the Johannes Kepler University, the University of Applied Arts Vienna and the Danube University Krems start this year’s festival. It is about how digital technologies change university teaching, which new skills have to be taught and which new methods have to be implemented, how performance and scientific output can be “measured” in a meaningful way, and how transdisciplinarity should not only be attempted, but lived.

Keyword collaboration; the hybrid talks and workshops of STEAM Inc are also about promoting cross-disciplinary collaboration – not only, but especially at universities. Science, Technology, Engineering, Artistic Innovation, and Mathematics form a kind of toolset for problem solving that always begins with the same two questions: “What problem am I trying to solve?” and “Who should I collaborate with to find an answer?” The STEAM Inc initiative aims to establish this cross-disciplinary approach at European universities and implement it in research and teaching. In addition, the aim is to evaluate the impact of STEAM.

The fact that digital gadgets, algorithms and the Internet are increasingly shaping our lives is just as clear as the unfortunate fact that women are still heavily underrepresented in the development of all these technologies. As part of her initiative “Initiative Digitalisierung Chancengerecht” (IDC), Doris Schmidauer invites experts from education, technology, business, culture and media to a panel discussion and wants to know what are the causes of the digital divide between the sexes and with what concrete measures we can overcome this gap once and for all.

The fact that the findings and recommendations of science have received unprecedented attention and appreciation as a result of the pandemic on the one hand, and conspiracy theories and esotericism are booming on the other, has prompted the University of Teacher Education Upper Austria and the Upper Austrian Chamber of Labor to reflect on how our education system can actively help to promote social thinking and action and strengthen a basic humanitarian attitude as part of their symposium “Perspectives on Political Education“.

The conclusion of this “Education Day” and at the same time the official Opening of Ars Electronica 2021 will be the opening of the new “Circus of Knowledge” with which the JKU wants to contribute from now on to ensuring that the magic of knowledge and the magic of cognition are caught as early as possible here in Linz and that young people are encouraged to develop and pursue their own ideas for the future… The artistic highlight of this evening celebration at the interface of art and science is the new interpretation of Schubert’s “Winterreise” (Winter Journey) by Naked Lunch frontman Oliver Welter and exceptional pianist Clara Frühstück, impressively accompanied by digital visualizations by Cori O’Lan…