Summer School Program
Expert talks
In the Expert Talks, the summer school students are inspired to reflect on the bigger picture context of academic investigation by thinkers, makers, technologists, artists, scientists, and policy makers. The experts share their experience, give exclusive insights into their fields and challenge the students to ask their own questions. In the discussion rounds following the lectures, the students have the opportunity to develop their joint approach to the big challenges of our time.
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Behind the Algorithmic Image
The recent tendency towards algorithmic forms of image-making builds upon longstanding tendencies in visual culture that shape the way we think about images and the processes behind them.
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How (Not) To Leave the Lab
I will highlight the epistemological insights, challenges of interdisciplinary collaboration, and future perspectives as experienced through a decade of practice in the hybrid field of art, science, and technology.
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It’s not a game – it’s a game changer
In her expert talk for FOUNDING LAB students, Founding Convent member Johanna Pirker is sharing her perspective on recent developments in gaming: “It’s not a game – it’s a game changer.”
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Materials Innovation and Circular Strategies: Co-Creating Resilient Urban Futures
In an era of pressing environmental concerns, how can the principles of circular economy and collaborative design revolutionize the way we approach materials in urban contexts?
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Physics at Scale: particle physics infrastructure, collaboration, and innovation atCERN’s Large Hadron Collider
At the Large Hadron Collider, scientists probe the smallest scales using the largest scientificinstrument. Tens of thousands of scientists, engineers, technicians, and staff from dozens of countriescollaborate to operate the LHC in pursuit of their scientific goals.
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Technology and Power: From the Invention of Writing to AI
How is the development of technology embedded in economic, political, military and ideological power structures?
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The Realities of Policy Negotiations
The realities of policy negotiations on the European level – insights from EU Ministerial Level Negotiations on Transport and Energy Policy Making
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The role of a new university for digitalization in strengthening Austria in the European Higher Education Area
In this Expert Talk, the Austrian Federal Minister for Education, Science and Research Martin Polaschek will speak about “The role of a new university for digitalization in strengthening Austria in the European Higher Education Area”.
Topicgroup workshops
In six Topicgroups, the students of the FOUNDING LAB carry out investigations and experimentations in the areas of Biotechnology & -arts, Future Materials & New Design Paradigms, Creative Robotics, Signal Detection & Interactivity, Brain-Computer-Interfaces, and AI, Machine Learning and Data Bias. After diving into these diverse fields and developing their initial research questions, the students are joined by workshop hosts that support them in developing the skills they need for putting their approaches into practice. In a public experimentation, the students finally take the stage in the city of Linz. The citizens become audiences witnessing new approaches in research practice in the public spaces of their city.
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Folding the future: materials and design strategies for origami robotics
Students will be given a lecture style overview of state-of-the-art origami and robotics technologies and processes followed by a workshop to create their own pre-designed oribots.
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GAZE: About Looking and Being Looked At
Industrial robots are being seamlessly integrated into creative processes, enhancing artistic endeavours by automating repetitive tasks and enabling collaborative exploration. This convergence prompts reflection on the evolving role of the artist and the impact of mechanisation on the nature of creativity.
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Is another world possible? AI against the grain
What do generative AI (GenAI) systems “know” about difference? What do they use to make inferences, and how do those inferences become de facto knowledge? What other kinds of knowledge are left out as they (re)encode existing assumptions?
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NeuroTech Workshop – Create Interactions using a Brain Computer Interface
You will be working using 3D printed parts and electronica like 9G servo’s and LED, over Arduino, with the possibility to connect your brain signals over our new Unicorn-BI to create fun interactions.
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Sensing, Signal Detection, and Interactivity
This group will be invited to look at possible ways systems can react to incoming signals.
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Wet & Sexy: Bioart, Creative Activism and a Collaborative Uterus
In this workshop students will gain an introduction to Bioart, post-diciplinary art / science practice, and collaborartive methodology.
Elective workshops
During the FOUNDING LAB Summer School, students have the chance to explore diverse topics and fields at the forefront of technological, scientific, and artistic thinking. In elective workshops, they broaden their perspective according to their individual interests. Themes range from policy making to storytelling, from business modelling to misinformation, from artificial intelligence to environmental issues. The workshop hosts will offer the students both input and a space for shared discussion to develop their visions for future fields of research.
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Designing for Responsible AI in a State of Climate Emergency
The goal of this workshop is to provide participants with a deeper, broader and practical understanding of responsibility as a relational and contextual concept by looking at the impacts (positive and negative) that different types of AI systems are having in society and the environment and ways to assess them through a collective decision-making simulation…
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Entrepreneurship in the context of AI
You will gain a comprehensive insight into the process of transforming an idea into a thriving business.
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Escape the Fake: Speculating the future of media literacy
In a not-too-distant future, humanity is living in a post-truth world. The spread of fake news and AI tools used in political campaigns have created a broken, dystopian reality, where it is hard to distinguish what is real from what is not.
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Futurist Workshop: Envisaging the University of the Future
FUTURIST-FUTURISTS ARE MOTIVATED BY CHANGE. THEY ARE NOT CONTENT MERELY TO DESCRIBE OR FORECAST. THEY DESIRE AN ACTIVE ROLE IN WORLD TRANSFORMATION.
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Prompt Battle Workshop
The Prompt Battle is a game show format with audience involvement that questions the meaning of prompt engineering in a playful and critical way.
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Research, Funding and Politics: A Contradiction in Terms?
Who decides over the funding for science, research and innovation?
Special formats
While the FOUNDING LAB Summer School students investigate diverse fields of research, new approaches to academic disciplines and unconventional takes on the great challenges of our time, they jointly focus on the core question of the What and the How of a university of the 21st century. In fireside chats and development sessions, they work on how we want to interact with each other in academic settings, what unexpected professional paths the university can open up for us, how we want to share credit for our joint work, and in what settings and spaces we will do this.
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Fireside Chats
In these informal evening sessions, a short input is followed by a joint group reflection of the students on the topic together with the speaker-moderators.
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Workshop: IDSA what and how? Inventing the University of the Future
In this workshop, the IDSA Founding President and Convent Members join us to jointly develop and hear our vision for the university of the future. This workshop does not only help us in developing our festival outputs, but is also a possibility to develop our visions together with those who will implement them. What are…