This was the Ars Electronica Festival 2017

featurefestival2017,

More than 1000 artists presented their works for five days straight at 12 different festival locations – a festival which was really filled to the very brim with media arts. Reason enough to have a look back at the best impressions of the 2017 Ars Electronica Festival!

The first festival day was full of visitors already – even though the exhibition space at POSTCITY encompasses more than 80.000 square meters, the old industrial halls didn’t seem empty at all any more.

36917685402_1b81d15ab2_o

Credit: Florian Voggeneder

“Nyloïd” by Cod.Act made the waiting time at the ticket counters a bit more exciting for the visitors. The space-filling sound sculpture didn’t only impress because of its sheer size, but most of all because of the bone-chilling sounds it emitted.

36948322266_f2bf63ff1c_o

Credit: Tom Mesic

Only a few meters away, the first exhibitions started – there was something to discover for everyone.

36981856111_9697a481e0_o

Credit: Tom Mesic

At “Rock Print”, which one this year’s STARTS Prize in the category of “Innovative Collaboration”, a robot built a giant structure out of pebbles and string right in the middle of POSTCITY.

36285117864_f6889204e8_o

Credit: Martin Hieslmair

One hall over, Sarah Petkus was showing the four mechanical legs of her robot Noodle Feet….

36330477033_9f9c2d5d07_o

Credit: Florian Voggeneder

…while NTT and the Ars Electronica Futurelab held frequent presentations on swarm logistics and drones.

36305493963_b8007a81f7_o

Credit: Christopher Sonnleitner

But it wasn’t only the upper floors of POSTCITY that were used for media arts this weekend. The old train hall as well as the basement of the old Postal Service logistics center turned into exhibition spaces for atmospheric artworks and extraordinary projects. “cellF”, for example, is a synthesizer – the only one in the world which is made out of a neural network.

36911287422_c45edbaff8_o

Credit: Florian Voggeneder

Once again, the Ars Electronica Festival took over the entire city of Linz – in total, 12 locations were taking part in the media arts festival. Lentos Museum of Art was turned into a walk-in future situation by our FEATURED ARTISTS Time’s Up.

36956739381_5e4fe7eda7_o

Credit: Tom Mesic

Even St. Mary’s Cathedral took part in the festival – instead of the usual benches and interior of the large cathedral, visitors found “LightScale II” by Uwe Rieger.

36931049776_4ebc73b239_o

Credit: Florian Voggeneder

Deep Space 8K showed off breathtaking visualizations and presentations. Pianist Maki Namekawa gave a little preview of her work, visualized by artist Cori Olan.

37122908015_b888429695_o

Credit: Florian Voggeneder

The evening’s nightline was well sought-after, as well – huge crowds gathered to celebrate together.

36934131486_0f16de8d0e_o

Credit: Florian Voggeneder

With great acts such as Chicks on Speed, it’s no wonder….the night turned into day at the festival’s music and evening program

36956345166_3df47c02d1_o

Credit: Florian Voggeneder

Artist Joseph Herscher went to bed a little earlier – he used the machine he built out of the giant spiral parcel chutes at POSTCITY to put himself into bed.

36330744213_1d95f60193_o

Credit: Florian Voggeneder 

Throughout the day, youngsters worked with the artist on their own Rube-Goldberg-style machine, right in the middle of the u19 CREATE YOUR WORLD festival at POSTCITY.

36289730444_1ab51c1315_o

Credit: Florian Voggeneder

At the Prix Forum at OK Center for Contemporary Art, the winners of this year’s Prix Ars Electronica presented their works…

37085590485_0cc2569a93_o

Credit: Tom Mesic

…while visitors could have a look at the winning projects next door at the CyberArts exhibition. With a little luck, you could even meet the artists themselves – like Maja Smrekar, who explained her series K-9_topology in the middle of the exhibition.

At the Welcome event a few days earlier, the artists were already very excited to be participating in this year’s festival.

36928947216_53cb5f0076_o

Credit: Florian Voggeneder

At the Ars Electronica Gala, the winners of Prix Ars Electronica and STARTS Prize were honored with their trophies.

36325865243_2442249d4a_o

Credit: Christopher Sonnleitner

Back at POSTCITY, visitors took little breaks from all the things going on around them…

36941024771_e7b7375490_o

Credit: Tom Mesic

The festival didn’t quiet down at all during the weekend – actually, the opposite was true.

37001225951_1d557f913a_o

From the old bunker all the way up to the roof – there was lots going on in all floors of POSTCITY.

36952917762_94b4ae0204_o

Credit: Tom Mesic

Hackers and artists had 24 hours to work on Brain Computer Interfaces at the BR41N.IO Hackathon…

36999787541_bbeca745bb_o

Credit: Tom Mesic

…while artist Dragan Ilic demonstrated a few steps over how he uses these Brain Computer Interfaces in his work. In “A3 K3”, the artist controls a giant industrial robot with his thoughts only to paint pictures.

36910761376_c105bed2e9_o

Credit: Florian Voggeneder

Artist Ei Wada played concerts with his remodeled fans throughout the festival.

36984245001_2d19233b4b_o

Credit: Florian Voggeneder

The field of computer animations was once again prominently featured at the 2017 Ars Electronica Festival – the duo Kimchi and Chips, for instance, presented their installation “Light Barrier” at CyberArts exhibition at OK Center for Contemporary Art, which won them an Award of Distinction at this year’s Prix Ars Electronica in the category of Computer Animation/VFX/Film.

37161246275_c7bc00ca6f_o

Credit: Tom Mesic

Italian artist Marco Donnarumma was also honored for his work. At the Big Concert Night Sunday night, he performed “Corpus Nil” in front of a large crowd.

37018948561_1de6bdce1b_o

Credit: Tom Mesic

Like every year, classical music also found its way into the Big Concert Night – Markus Poschner, the new director of Bruckner Orchestra Linz, staged a concert entitled “Departure”. The audience was invited to move freely between the musicians.

36915886236_7a0aac8fe3_o

Credit: Tom Mesic

Another novelty at the festival: the Gallery Spaces. Media art meets the Art Market – an exciting encounter right in the middle of the basement at POSTCITY.

36927518832_337c6a30ec_o

Credit: Tom Mesic

Different worlds met at the ZusammenKommenLab (Coming Together Lab) as well: Here, projects by and for migrants were presented and exchange was fostered.

36937079156_82e83f96d6_o

Credit: Tom Mesic

Meanwhile, at the Future Innovators Summit, creative thinkers and innovators were brainstorming hard about how our future might possibly look like.

36984031031_e6babe808d_o

Credit: Tom Mesic

BIO AUSTRIA provided lots of yummy snacks and culinary highlights from Upper Austria on Saturday.

36946616631_8f9e3d468a_o

Credit: Florian Voggeneder

On all of the five festival days, those who were brave enough could try the “Neurotransmitter 3000”. The machine measures via multiple biosensors the fear of the subject and adjusts its turning speed based on this information – the more you are scared, the slower it goes and vice versa.

36910084656_63bc5c7c03_o

Credit: Florian Voggeneder

This year, for the first time, there was a special WE GUIDE YOU tour for the little ones….

36897453806_e8ca42762e_o

Credit: Florian Voggeneder

….as well as an area restricted to those over 18 only. In the “Artificial Intimacy” exhibition, works that deal with intimacy and artificial intelligence were exhibited.

36949332006_4c8007f4f6_o

Credit: Florian Voggeneder

There was no shortage of performances – “Singularity” for example showed an impressive mixture of data, music, dance, and architecture.

Credit Florian Voggeneder 2

Credit: Florian Vogggeneder

STARTS Prize winner Etsuko Yakushimaro also gave a live performance of her song “I’m Humanity” at the Ars Electronica Gala. The artist received the prize for using DNA as a storage medium for her music piece.

36254144314_188c399baf_o

Credit: Tom Mesic

Another highlight were the many conferences and lectures at the festival. The theme symposium on Friday discussed many facets of Artificial Intelligence – starting from mechanical creativity and going all the way to discussing AI spirituality, there was lots to be discovered.

36893104696_6d7dd22b2d_o

Credit: Florian Voggeneder

“Training 2038” by Kitchen Budapest examined very similar questions. The work explores how an automatic decision tree without any sort of moral conscience would behave.

36891969736_70b8880ff4_o

Credit: Tom Mesic

Just as pressing are the questions that UCLA’s Campus Exhibition “FEMINIST CLIMATE CHANGE: Beyond the Binary” asks. The main topic was eco-feminism, as shown in several impressive works of art.

36739457820_a208eceebb_o

Credit: Tom Mesic

Saturday evening, the annual Klangwolke proved a perfect start to an exciting night by bringing “Moby Dick” right to the Danube in Linz…

36741174360_743e72a03a_o

Credit: Florian Voggeneder

…later, the night continued at with OK Night until the wee hours.

36728694560_61f49fb62a_o

Credit: Florian Voggeneder

These artists popped up time and time again at different festival locations: The project “Sumbiophilia” took to the city during the Ars Electronica Festival.

37145246525_41faa35771_o

Credit: Florian Voggeneder

Another outdoor installation was this excavator. Visitors could control the giant machine via Brain Computer Interfaces with their thoughts only.

36690803250_7a99cf7dfd_o

Credit: Florian Voggeneder

More universities than ever before exhibited the works of their students in the Campus exhibition. Here, two visitors are experiencing “Fuzzy_Logic Machine” by Gabriele Gordillo and Irene Ródenas Sáinz de Baranda.

36961274261_cacdda74d9_o

Credit: Florian Voggeneder

Festival director Martin Honzik enjoyed getting to see and interact with so many works of media art as well – like here, for example, with Cinema Swarm by Jaymis Loveday.

36288727973_df64dccbc0_o

Credit: Tom Mesic

At the u19 Ceremony, the young winners of the u19 category at Prix Ars Electronica were awarded their trophies.

37161243135_eb053f1756_o

Credit: Florian Voggeneder

Artist Aoife van Linden Tol presented her explosive performance “Star Storm” – with its many explosions, fireworks, explosive charges, and smoke bombs, it could not have been any more spectacular.

36928135156_3691930894_o

Credit: Florian Voggeneder

At the Ars Electronica Center, Prof. Hiroshi Ishii and his team showed new works at the “RADICAL ATOMS” exhibition. They all experiment with new materials, like here at the project “kinetiX”.

36929635452_761cfcac5e_o

Credit: Florian Voggeneder

The live acts were exceptional in their diversity this year – Alex Augier for example performed “_nybble_” right in the midst of visualizations.

36946322222_6af345b89f_o

Credit: Florian Voggeneder

The Ars Electronica Center saw the opening of the new VRLab.

36346057314_fe2ed46798_k

Credit: Tom Mesic

Maki Namekawa played an impressive concert and concluded the Festival in a musical way.

36290103643_c6a5ac81cd_o

Credit: Florian Voggeneder

The 2017 Ars Electronica Festival – five days full of vivid impressions, concerts, exchanges, and, most of all, media art! We’re already excited for next year’s edition…

,