2023-08-28 11:46:52
Gerfried Stocker, the artistic director of Ars Electronica, saw climate change and artificial intelligence (AI) as the two outstanding thematic blocks in the presentation of the program highlights on Monday – in the tried and tested network of art, technology and society.
At the end of the very streamlined presentation of the extensive programme, Stocker recommended that the guests take a “We guide you” tour through the PostCity and plan their visit to the festival in advance. The Ars is “especially a role model for interdisciplinarity,” said the founding president of the IDSA (Institute for Digital Sciences Austria) Stefanie Lindstaedt. “The challenge of the IDSA is to establish this interdisciplinarity academically.” The Founding Lab is represented at the festival; Stocker announced that Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales would give a keynote speech at the joint opening.
In addition to the opening on Wednesday, he highlighted the award ceremony on Thursday, at which the Prix Ars Electronica, the EU Commission’s StartsPrize and the European Union Prize for Citizen Science will be presented. On Friday, the Bruckner Orchestra Linz will play in the Gleishalle on the 20th Big Concert Night and “continue the investigation of Bruckner with five Scherzi”, as Artistic Director Norbert Trawöger announced, “in resonance with the rapper Def Ill and the Icelandic double bass player Bára Gísladóttir “.
“Art embarks on a future-seeking path, to which we contribute,” Rector Martin Rummel outlined the collaboration of the Anton Bruckner private university, including a dance performance in Deep Space. For Saturday Stocker presented the Futurelab Night and on Sunday exceptional pianist Maki Namekawa will interpret Keith Jarrett’s legendary Cologne concert “in search of authenticity, what is real”.
Festival organizer Christl Baur gave an overview of the exhibitions, including the themed exhibition “(Co)Owning More-than-Truth”, the presentation of the many award-winning works, the Gardens Exhibition of the international partners and the exhibitions by Lentos and Kunstuni. Lentos director Hemma Schmutz is looking forward to nine positions from the Cifo Award, from which Latin American artists receive money to realize their work. Art university rector Brigitte Hütter pointed out the Interface Cultures show in the PostCity, but also a large-scale installation on the main square and the Soundcampus. Stocker added that 56 universities will take part in the program.
Veronika Liebl, Managing Director of the festival, presented the conference programme, “dense and varied”, starting with the three-day themed symposium, which approaches the truth from a technological, ecological and democratic-political point of view, regarding education in the conferences of the Founding Lab and the Forum digital education to computer animation in the Expanded Animation Symposium.
As specials, Stocker highlighted the Transformation Lounge, the youth festival Create Your World and the contributions from Futurelab and Solutions, the research and project department of the Ars. “We are showing ten projects that we are currently working on or have been working on this year,” announced technical director Roland Haring, among other things, the role that AI robots can play in everyday office life in the future. Solutions Managing Director Michael Mondria promised an “interactive meeting zone made up of projects with the economy” that show how science transformation can look like, including an insight into the Climate Office of the space agency ESA.
Mayor Klaus Luger (SPÖ) saw the festival theme as “one of the central questions in a nutshell” and emphasized that for him as an empiricist, “truth is something that is calculated”, but at a time “in which fact-orientation is not en vogue”, this question is a long-term process that shakes the foundations of previous scientific work”. Councilor for Culture Doris Lang-Mayerhofer (ÖVP) saw Ars Electronica as a trailblazer for the defining questions of our future and wished “that we might promote togetherness be able to bring more to the fore once more”.
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