Want a taste of the future? - Here comes Ars Electronica Home Delivery!

Ars Electronica Home Delivery is here to stay…
Ars Electronica Home Delivery is not intended to substitute for a visit to the museum, which will remain closed for the time being, but rather as a newly developed approach that aims to permanently open up our Linz-based artistic and scholarly engagement with the future to a larger audience—even when the Ars Electronica Center is open for business as usual again. “Our educational mission is to enter into a dialogue on current developments in art, technology, and society,” says Gerfried Stocker. “With Ars Electronica Home Delivery, we’re doing that online. In doing so, we’re creating an additional and lasting range of offerings that will enhance our portfolio in the long term, for example, for schools and businesses. So, in the future, guided tours, presentations, and workshops will not just be held at the Ars Electronica Center in Linz, but also on the web or as hybrid formats, thus making them interesting for an audience beyond Austria’s borders.

… and it will unleash its tried and tested strengths on new terrain
Ars Electronica Home Delivery draws on the competence and expertise developed over the years by the museum team and at the same time enters completely new territory. “When it comes to content and communication, not much will change for the time being,” says Gerfried Stocker. “Our info-trainers are incredibly good at packaging complex topics in exciting stories, preparing them for different target groups and initiating dialogue and discussions.” However, all this has only taken place in real space so far, and the team has little experience with doing this on the web. “The really challenging thing about Ars Electronica Home Delivery is that we don’t want to make museum television, but rather create an experience. As with all of Ars Electronica’s other activities, our mission here is not to treat people as mere recipients but to turn them into participants. We don’t want to dumb down, edify or entertain anyone, but to involve, inspire, and motivate everyone. Only if we succeed in this will we have succeeded.” For this reason, virtually every Ars Electronica Home Delivery event will enable the public to participate, influence, and work together. As is typical for Ars Electronica, the focus is thus not on mere presentation but on interaction.

LIVE and interactive from the Ars Electronica Center Linz
The program structure of Ars Electronica Home Delivery is deliberately based on what has made the Ars Electronica Center the most-visited museum in Upper Austria for years. There are guided tours, presentations, workshops, and concerts, all of which use the Ars Electronica Center’s infrastructure. “We’re going to put a lot of effort into providing our audience with a maximum of interactivity and attractiveness,” announces Gerfried Stocker. “Our CitizenLab will become an open forum in which we’ll be inviting guests from the arts and sciences to join us for talks. The Deep Space will become a showcase from which we will broadcast extraordinary presentations. Our Piano Room will become a stage for concerts that include visualizations. And we have a mobile unit that allows us to move through all the exhibitions and labs in the entire building and give guided tours.”

A multifaceted program for different target groups

Ars Electronica Home Delivery … in concert
Concerts with (real-time) visualizations by renowned artists will be offered regularly. The venue and stage for these performances will be the Ars Electronica Center’s new Piano Room, with the computerized Bösendorfer 290 Imperial CEUS grand piano. This room is also equipped with projection screens and sensors that make it possible to show visualizations that interact in real time with the volume and timbre of the music. Before and after the concerts, there will always be moderated talks with the artists with audience participation. The program will start with the concert by Maki Namekawa and Dennis Russell Davies on May 1—they will play Ma Mère L’Oye for piano four hands by Maurice Ravel. Already in preparation are performances of piano works by Igor Stravinsky, Ludwig von Beethoven, Wolfgang A. Mozart, Kurt Schwertsik (who celebrates his 80th birthday on June 25), Arvo Pärt, Joep Beving, and, of course, Philip Glass.

Ars Electronica Home Delivery … in the Deep Space 8K
You don’t have to say much about the special features of the Deep Space 8K. As part of Ars Electronica Home Delivery, the projection room will also unleash its full potential and provide a unique setting for special interactive presentations on topics such as astronomy, anatomy, media art, and art history. The “Deep Space LIVE” format (every Thursday at 7:00 p.m.), which has been very popular for years, will be included in the Ars Electronica Home Delivery program along with numerous new—sometimes moderated—formats. Renowned experts will be contributing to the events: Astrophotographer Dietmar Hager will be inviting guests to join him on his popular virtual excursions right across the universe as we know it; neuroscientist Manuela Macedonia will be talking about the latest findings on the human brain; “Anatomy for All” will be presented by Prof. Dr. Franz Fellner, Prim. Dr. Bernd Lamprecht, Univ.-Prof. Dr. Andreas F. Zierer, Prim. Dr. Andreas Shamiyeh, Prim. Dr. Clemens Steinwender and Univ.-Prof. Dr. Andreas Gruber.

Ars Electronica Home Delivery … in the labs
Since last June, the Ars Electronica Center has had an entire “laboratory floor” where the MaterialLab and BioLab are lined up next to the FabLab and CitizenLab. All of these labs create an infrastructure that gives visitors the chance to actively engage with future issues. And it is this very opportunity that is also being offered by Ars Electronica Home Delivery. Guided by the Ars Electronica Center’s info-trainers, there will be interactive workshops for various age and target groups. The CitizenLab will also be the venue for regular—and interactive—talks with guests from the arts and sciences.

Ars Electronica Home Delivery … let’s take a tour!
Guided tours are an established and popular part of a visit to the Museum of the Future. It goes without saying that we will also be offering them daily as part of Ars Electronica Home Delivery. As usual, the Ars Electronica Center’s info-trainers will act as “guides to the future.”

Ars Electronica Home Delivery … talking to artists & scientists
Over the past decades, Ars Electronica has built up a worldwide network that includes thousands of artists, scientists, developers, and activists. In the near future, a whole lot of them will be guests at the Ars Electronica Center’s CitizenLab—both real and virtual—and each will devote themselves to different aspects of the coronavirus—and especially the post-coronavirus—era. The audience is encouraged to participate in the conversation.

Ars Electronica Home Delivery … welcome to the Animation Festival!
Animation is one of the most popular forms of media art. It’s no coincidence, then, that animation has had its own Prix Ars Electronica competition category since 1987 (which, incidentally, is now entering its 23rd edition). Since then, an international jury of experts has sifted through thousands of animations every year and awarded prizes to the best of them. The latter are then presented to the public in the form of a specially curated Ars Electronica Animation Festival. Animations will be shown as part of the Ars Electronica Home Delivery program, and before or afterwards there will always be talks with the artists, in which the public can of course participate.

… which will begin its test phase on May 1
Ars Electronica Home Delivery will be launching on May Day with Maki Namekawa, Dennis Russel Davies, and Cori O’Lan. It will continue on Monday, May 4, 2020, with week 1 of the test phase (see weekly program).

Special: The first “Bike-In Art Cinema” in Linz
Starting in mid-May, the Ars Electronica Center will be presenting an early summer special: the very first “Bike-In Art Cinema” in Linz. This will be made possible by the Linz-based company Ton & Bild Medientechnik GmbH, which is fitting the Ars Electronica Center’s Main Deck with a large LED wall. “Every Friday and Saturday, we’ll be offering events and trying out different things,” announces Gerfried Stocker. “In the afternoon, the program will be geared more toward families and will include documentaries, for instance, by Erich Pröll, as well as animations from our Deep Space family program and astronomy applications like ‘Uniview.’ In the evening, we will show visual productions, mainly by local artists.” The first phase, however, should primarily serve to get to know the audience. “Depending on the feedback we get, we will expand our offering or establish certain thematic priorities.” The “Bike-In Art Cinema”, however, will not compete with the established Linz art-house cinema scene: “We are setting up this initiative as an art project and not as an open-air cinema. Above all, we want to offer local artists and the people of Linz a stage and something a bit away from their everyday experiences.” From mid-May onward, the public arriving on foot or by bike will be able to spend inspiring evenings on the Ars Electronica Center’s Main Deck while maintaining the necessary distance from one another—appropriate distance markings will be put up in the coming days.