| Ars Electronica is an organization based in Linz, Austria,
founded in 1979 around a festival for art, technology and society which was part of the International Bruckner Festival. It became its own festival and a yearly event in 1986. Its
Director until 1995 was Peter Weibel. Since 1995 Gerfried Stocker is the
Artistic Director of Ars Electronica. In addition to running the yearly festival, Ars Electronica currently maintains a media
center/museum, the Ars Electronica Center, which was
opened in 1996 and offers tours and courses and hosts a technology lab. Starting in 1987,
it also began hosting the Prix Ars Electronica, awarding
prizes and generating publicity for outstanding cyberarts innovations.
With its specific orientation and the long-standing continuity it has displayed since 1979, Ars Electronica is an
internationally unique platform for digital art and media culture consisting of the following four divisions:
Ars Electronica – Festival for Art, Technology and Society Prix Ars Electronica – International Competition for
CyberArts Ars Electronica Center – Museum of the Future Ars Electronica Futurelab – Laboratory for Future
Innovations
- "Ars Electronica stands for the world’s leading media arts festival, a superlative state-of-the-art museum, and an
innovative R&D facility. The Ars Electronica Festival, the Ars Electronica Center – Museum of the Future, and the
Ars Electronica
Futurelab (http://www.aec.at/futurelab) are big draws that attract visitors,
tourists, clients and associates from throughout Upper Austria and around the world." -- from a 2003 Ars Electronica press
release.
Parts of Ars Electronica
In the real as well as in the virtual world, Ars Electronica consists of several parts:
Center
The "Ars Electronica Center - Museum of the future" is located in Linz, Austria, Europe. It is the leading museum of
digital art and media art. Opened in 1996, the center presents computer art
on a 2000 square meter area.
The Ars Electronica Center opened in 1996 as a prototype of a “Museum of the Future.” Its mission is to utilize
interactive forms of mediation to facilitate the general public’s encounter with virtual reality, digital networks and
modern media. A focus on issues at the interface of media art, new technologies and social developments characterize the
Center’s innovative exhibitions. Beyond this, the Ars Electronica Center is the permanent base and thus the organizational
foundation of Ars Electronica’s regional and international activities.
Futurelab
Futurelab is an interdiciplinary research project reuniting art, technology and society. It is a model of a new kind of media
art laboratory in which artistic and technological innovations engender reciprocal inspiration. The lab’s teams bring
together a wide variety of specialized skills; their approach is characterized by interdisciplinarity and international
networking. The Futurelab’s wide-ranging activities include designing and engineering exhibitions, creating artistic
installations, as well as pursuing collaborative research with universities and joint ventures with private sector
associates.
Festival
Chronologically the festival was the starting point of Ars Electronica in 1979. It is the most important festival of digital
art world wide. The festival is conducted under a different motto each year. The essence of the internationally renowned Ars
Electronica Festival is interdisciplinarity and an open encounter of international experts from the arts and sciences with a
broad audience of highly diverse backgrounds and interests. Annually since 1979, the Festival has featured a lineup of symposia,
exhibitions, performances and events designed to further an artistic and scientific confrontation with the social and cultural
phenomena that are the consequences of technological change.
The years from 1979 to 1986 are untitled.
- 1987 Free Sound
- 1988 The Art of Scene
- 1989 In the Network of Systems
- 1990 Digital Dreams - Virtual Worlds
- 1991 Out of Control
- 1992 Endo & Nano - The World From Within
- 1993 Genetic Art - Artifical Life
- 1994 Intelligent Environment
- 1995 Welcome to the Wired World - Mythos Information
- 1996 Memesis - The Future of Evolution
- 1997 FleshFactor - Informationsmaschine Mensch
- 1998 Infowar - information.macht.krieg
- 1999 LifeScience
- 2000 NEXT SEX - Sex in the Age of its Procreative Superfluousness
- 2001 'Takeover' - Who's doing th art of tomorrow
- 2002 'Unplugged' - Art as the Scene of Global Conflicts
- 2003 'Code' - The Language of Out Time
- 2004 'Timeshift - The World in 25 Years'
Prix
The Prix Ars Electronica is often called the Oscar of computer art. As the world’s premier cyberarts
competition, the Prix Ars Electronica has been a forum for
artistic creativity and innovation since 1987. It is the trend barometer in an ever-expanding and increasingly diversified world
of media art. Thanks to its annually recurring nature, its international scope and the incredible variety of the works submitted
for prize consideration, the enormous Prix Ars Electronica Archive provides a detailed look at the development of media art and a
feel for its openness and diversity. In 2004 Wikipedia was awarded a Golden Nica in the category "Digital Communities".
External links
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