Linz is covered in fog, the city has yet to wake up: It is Thursday morning. POSCITY is still quiet, only the occasional sounds of the nearby train station break the silence every now and then. But not for long, since Thursday is the first day of the 2016 festival.
Here, you can see the first day in pictures.
Credit: Florian Voggeneder
Slowly, there is movement around POSTCITY – visitors are arriving at the festival location. At 10AM, there is a queue at the Welcome Desk: The festival can start.
Credit: Florian Voggeneder
Gerfried Stocker, Artistic Director at Ars Electronica, opens the Festival with a tour through POSTCITY, showing some of the many works of media art that are on display.
Credit: Florian Voggeneder
One of them is “Sculpture Factory” by Davide Quayola – the impressive industrial robot carves out replicas of Michelangelo’s sculptures, en masse.
Credit: Florian Voggeneder
Quayola’s robot is in good company. Among the many machines at the festival, there is also this little orange one, which takes pictures of visitors in extremely high quality.
Credit: Florian Voggeneder
POSTCITY is hosting media art from top to bottom – deep below the surface, in the old nuclear bunker, you can find “Rotating Lights” by Stefan Tiefengraber.
Credit: Tom Mesic
A little higher, visitors are exploring the u19 exhibition – here, the award-winning works of the children and youth category of renowned Prix Ars Electronica are on show.
Credit: Tom Mesic
A reason to smile: at this year’s Ars Electronica Festival, you can try out Virtual Reality glasses. “Das Erkenntnisspiel” lets visitors discover this new technology in a playful way.
Credit: Tom Mesic
At the OK Center of Contemporary Art, the CyberArts exhibition is opened up in the afternoon. The award-winning works of Prix Ars Electronica are on display here.
Credit: Tom Mesic
This is also where you can visit “Inferno” – this performance has visitors strapped into robotic suits, which then move the humans around like dancers in a thought-out choreography.
Credit: Tom Mesic
At the Art university Linz, the Campus Exhibition was opened. The exhibiting guest university this year is Tsinghua University from Beijing.
Credit: Florian Voggeneder
Back at POSTCITY, the big Ars Electronica Opening is starting. Here, a number of varied performances can be seen: Drones are racing each other…
Credit: Florian Voggeneder
….while Dragan Ilic uses a huge industrial robot to paint.
Credit: Florian Voggeneder
Night owls and music lovers got their full share until late at night. Today, the festival is starting again – we cannot wait to see what will happen at Festival Day 2! Stay tuned…