This is a quick picture post of what I experienced at the ARS Electronica Festival 2008, just to give you a flavour of the festival this year.

Friday

The Journey

Kitchen Budapest to Linz. Five hours in the back of a ‘Seat Leon’ in the company of; locative media artist, Jeff Knowlton; researcher, András ‘Sly’ Szalai; researcher, Dani Feles; and Pal Feles, Dani’s father. Stopping off briefly to admire the efficiency of Austrian wind farms and service station toilets!

Orienteering

One hour reading the attractive but confusing festival guide, before we decided just to wander around.

Hybrid Playground by Lalalabs aims to combine physical and virtual play to encourage children to collaborate to achieve their goals. The children (some older than others) have a modified PDA wristband which displays these goals and sensor data from playground is collected wirelessly using Arduinos with XBee shields. Great fun :)

Fallen Fruit, by David Burns, Matias Viegener and Austin Young, a group of artists questioning urban space and ideas of what is public or private through the medium of fruit. They also held a ‘Public Fruit Jam’ on Sunday and Jeff helped to make some of the jam from local, homegrown and public fruit.

The ARS Electronica Center was interesting to see, but I felt that I knew a lot of it from what I’d seen online. Still, Dani enjoyed the flying machine!

The OK Center for Contemporary Art held the CyberArts projects. A really nice building and plenty to see.

Touched Echo is a beautiful, minimal, audio piece and the of the brass sign topped it off nicely.

Appeel was one for everyone. Someone did an amazing portrait… I went for something a little more subtle and left a mark for Tinker.it ;)

Most people have probably seen reactable online, but you really have to use it to get the full effect.

We watched the Lichtfaktor demo video, but unfortunately weren’t staying long enough for the ‘Lightwriting Workshop’…maybe next year!

Saturday

The Interface Cultures projects were a little abandoned when we arrived.

Two pieces that stood out were Perfect Human by Mika Satomi and Hannah Perner-Wilson, wareables which reacted to radio signals and Balance by Ichiro Kojima, which provided force feedback for weight of digital data. 

ephemeral melody was on the doorway of the Hybrid Ego exhibition, and rightly so. A bubble blowing machine has a fan to blow the bubbles towards copper pipes and when they hit, they create sound. This way to generate random melodies was beautiful in its simplicity (although it was probably harder to make than it seemed). The video gives a better impression.

Virtual Asukakyo is a mixed reality project. They rendered part of the city of Asuka-Kyo on top of the surrounding courtyard. It made me feel like I was in ‘The Lawnmower Man’ for a bit.

Gravity Grabber, by Tachi Lab, produced a really nice haptic feedback device. By applying a variety of pressures to your fingertips they simulate the same feeling as holding an object with weight or the weight of multiple objects inside a container.  I think it’s more impressive when you’re there.

Vernichtungsaktion was a public display that destroyed brand name ‘knock-offs’. It was particularly interesting because there was a rag market next to the exhibition that was selling this sort of merchandise.

The first piece we saw in the Lentos Museum was Origami Space Race by Saso Sadlacek. A great launch ramp for paper planes in the upper atmosphere, triggered by a mobile phone!

Ecology of the Techno Mind was in the basement of the Lentos Museum. Two pieces that I really liked were Robot Rabit and Robot Partner 2.0.

In the afternoon we went to watch the Perfect Human performance, which took place in the recess of the Lentos Museum.

The outdoor performance and fireworks took place on the bank of the Danube (Donua), on a floating projection screen. I found the performance a bit baffling, as it was in German, but I was ensured that even if I did speak German that it wouldn’t make much sense. Still, the choreography of the spotlights, boats, fireworks and graffiti artists was an achievement!

Then we found the real party, in a warehouse, in the industrial district, on the bank of the Danube.

This was my first experience of ARS Electronica and I look forward to going again next year, especially as it is coupled with the Linz 2009 European Capital of Culture festivities.