#2012 Ars Electronica Festival Highlights

THE BIG PICTURE is the theme of the 2012 Ars Electronica Festival being held in Linz, Austria from August 30 to September 3. Occupying the focal point is the effort to identify all-encompassing images that capture the world that’s coming to be, Big Pictures that do justice to the progressive globalization and interrelatedness of our world, ones that capture its contradictions and flaws as well as ways in which people are coming together. By showcasing inspiring best-practice examples from art and science, this year’s festival is a call for a new, open-minded way of considering the development of a viable vision of our future—how such a Big Picture ought to be composed and how it might become reality.THE BIG PICTURE – New Concepts for a New World, Long Version

Intro to the 2012 Ars Electronica Festival

the scene of the 2012 Ars Electronica Festival

Exploring the possibilities of DATA MOSHING along the line between coincidence and control.
SECTION TITLES for ARS ELECTRONICA ANIMATION FESTIVAL 2012

During the voestalpine Klangwolke on September 1, 2012,people were asked to take photos of their neighbours in order to create the biggest group-photo in the world.

The Cloud in the Web tells the story of our increasingly networked world from the first telephone to Facebook & Co. Hundreds of firefighters, industrial robots, water cannons, oarsmen and illuminated carrier pigeons are only a few of this play’s protagonists. Making their international debut will be a swarm of Klangwolke quadrocopters, four-rotor drone whirlybirds cruising above the audience.

At the u19 Ceremony the prizewinners in the u19 – CREATE YOUR WORLD category will be presented and honored.

Photo showing: Agnes Aistleitner (AT) (Golden Nica Winner u19 - CREATE YOUR WORLD)

In January 2012, almost a year after the largest protests in Egypt, I found myself travelling around Cairo – seeking traces of the revolution. At a roundtable discussion and encounters on the street in Egypt I tried to identify different aspects of the political events of what is called Arab Spring.

Real-life confrontation meets Internet research.

In my video I can be seen searching online for information on the subject. In my work, this information encounters real-life situations. How are things really? Recipients of my video are taken virtually from observations made from afar to actual confrontations on site.
In about 15 minutes, I give viewers a few impressions of my journey. I document meeting students and a professor at a roundtable discussion during which they talk and philosophize about the revolution. I also record chance encounters on the street that give insight into the complexity of life in Cairo. In between, there is my research at the computer, which shows me as an observer from afar.

I go out into the streets to meet the people: whether I am wandering through Cairo’s markets in the evening, along streets or around Tahrir Square, over the course of the video I meet different people who express a variety of opinions on the events of the revolution.

In my work, I illuminate different aspects of what happened and attempt to reveal the complexity and dynamics of the matter to the viewer.

On Saturday, the symposium scene shifts from the Brucknerhaus to the Lentos, an ideal venue for a discussion of the respective roles allocated to art and science, and the real-world possibilities of and limits to collaboration between them. Scientist George Church (US) and artist Joe Davis (US), brilliant transgressors of the borders of their respective disciplines, will present their positions and work in the area of new biotechnologies. Afterwards, they’ll take part in a panel discussion about the theory and practice of collaboration among artists and scientists with curator and bio-art expert Jens Hauser (DE/FR) and CERN physicist Michael Doser (AT/CH). Then Gabriele Lohmann (DE) will elaborate of the role of new imaging methods in brain research, and give us an idea of the enormous potential the latest findings in the neurosciences have to change our views of humankind.

An evening with the crème de la crème of the digital arts – a highlight of the 2012 Ars Electronica Gala is the ceremony at which the Golden Nica statuettes are bestowed upon the Prix Ars Electronica prizewinners.

In spring 2011, I created a flat circuit design that could be constructed in a Petri dish. This circuit was then cast in negative relief in PDMS (polydimethylsiloxane) gel. Cells and growth media were then applied to circuit impressions in the gel. The cells used were E coli modified with a gene for silicatein,1 a ubiquitous protein native to many different marine organisms. These organisms use silicatein to polymerize silica from seawater in order to create glass endoskeletons and exoskeletons in a fantastic variety of forms. The silicatein gene used in the Bacterial Radio experiments was isolated from the marine sponge Tethya aurantia.

Joe Davis (born 1951) is a research affiliate in the Department of Biology at MIT and in the George Church Laboratory at Harvard Medical School. His research and art includes work in the fields of molecular biology, bioinformatics, "space art", and sculpture, using media including but not limited to centrifuges, radios, prosthetics, magnetic fields, and genetic material. Davis' teaching positions have been at MIT and the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD).
Davis' works include the sculpture Earth Sphere, a landmark fog fountain at Kendall Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts, near the MIT campus;[1] Rubisco Stars, a transmission of a message to nearby stars from the Arecibo Observatory radiotelescope in Puerto Rico, carried out in November 2009;[2][3] New Age Ruby Falls, a project to create an artificial aurora using a 100,000 watt electron beam fired into the magnetosphere from a NASA space shuttle,[4] which has not yet been carried out, and Microvenus, a piece of symbolic art involving engineering the genetic code of a microbe.[5][6][7]

During the voestalpine Klangwolke, thousands of illuminated letters became part of the show

SEED has put together the opening session. The point of departure is the proverbial Overview Effect triggered by the appearance in the mass media of the first pictures of our planet taken from outer space. Thus, the subject here is the role of pictorial media in forming, imparting and propagating images of the world as well as the question of which visualization techniques we can utilize in our efforts to understand, depict and get across the complex interrelationships of our time.

A person who attended Ars Electronica Festival with an additional title ”The Big Picture” wrote an article on his blog This was quite a new experience for him,

Additional highlights at this year’s event include the WikiSym annual symposium, which focuses on the subject of wikis and open collaboration, the u19 - Create Your World festival within a festival that encourages kids and young people to think about their world in a new way, and of course the CyberArts exhibition of winners from the world's highest endowed prize for digital arts, the Prix Ars Electronica.

Ars Electronica: Highlights 2012 ... wenn man sie teilt - auf einem außergewöhnlichen Festival, wie der Ars Electronica und dadurch mit der ganzen Welt.

the intro to the speaker of Ars Electronica Festival 2012 The Big Picture - New Concepts for a new World