Ars Electronica Festival takes place

The Ars Electronica Festival in Linz will definitely take place from 9 to 13 September as planned, although in a different way than usual, given the decentralized nature of travel restrictions and distance rules. The Ars Electronica Center (AEC), on the other hand, remains closed for the time being and initiates a “home delivery”: videoconferences and transmission allow you to participate in the program interactively.

The idea was “due to pragmatism,” Ars Electronica director Gerfried Stocker said at a press conference on Tuesday. Because: “When suddenly you can be alone in front of a photo in Albertina, quality arises. We are frustrated, ”he says, given the distance rules, he sees no way to restart normal museum operations at the AEC at the moment. Tours at the “Museum of the Future” are designed to be highly interactive, with guides, with laboratory situations and with a focus on trying and getting there. “We would need more people to constantly disinfect than visitors to the house.”

Therefore, home delivery has been considered: the basis is a program with events (tours, conferences, concerts, workshops, etc.) as in the normal daily life of AEC. Visitors can log on to guided tours in a kind of video conference and participate interactively or passively follow everything through the broadcast. The offer is initially free and begins with a concert by Maki Namekawa and Dennis Russel Davies on May 1. According to Stocker, it is open when the museum’s regular operations resume, but the transition will likely be smooth.

“We are experiencing a crash course in digital skills that no government digitization offensive anywhere in the world would have been successful,” Stocker is convinced. In view of the changes caused by the crown crisis, it is also clear to him that the Ars Electronica Festival, dedicated to the discourse on social developments, is “indispensable” this year.

Due to crown regulations, travel restrictions for the international audience and, not least, due to the tense financial situation of many partners, however, it is certain that, as originally planned, “a festival with dozens of thousands in the Kepler Gardens on the JKU campus will certainly not play. ” But it is highly likely that 57 universities around the world “have the money, the time, and the desire to do something on the site.” Ars Electronica wants to create a platform for this: “It doesn’t matter how many people are allowed to meet in September,” Stocker said. Also in Linz, they want to work with as many places as possible to distribute the audience.