Austria,

I was thrilled when our 4 Aces collaborators ARS Electronica invited us to their annual gala.
Last Friday my friends Zel, Bruno, Cosima and I hopped on a train to Linz to celebrate with them.

Cosima and Zel Sleeping on the train

The Gala started with a humorous Robot dance performance.

And then they presented the six Prix ARS Electronica winners selected out of 2,703 entries from 77 countries. 

I was inspired by Project Fumbaro (meaning “hang in there”), by Takeo Saijo. It is a crowd-sourced volunteer platform benefitting earthquake survivors in Japan. He created the network after the 2011 earthquake to bring funding and helping hands directly to the people in need. His work is such a great example of how creative technology can provide avenues of productive change. 

Aftermath of the 2011 earthquake in Japan

Then there was BlindMaps by Markus Schmeiduch, Ruben can der Veuten and Andrew Spitz. 

They designed a special, technologically-advanced walking stick for people who can’t see. The walking stick uses touch-sensitive technology and GPS and talks to the user, guiding them to their destination safely. 

And then from the group Universal Everything from the UK there was Walking City, a really beautiful animation and sound piece of a creature walking and continuously regenerating its surface from crumbling buildings to slick white shards of glass.

They honored Roy Ascott, a visionary thinker and the great pioneer of telematic art. 

Possibly my favorite project was the intervention at CERN by Julius von Bismarck.

Details from the ARS Electronica website:

INTERVENTION IN PERCEPTION – NUMBER 1 – DARK SPACE
“As part of his residency, Julius is making interventions at the CERN laboratory. The first intervention took place in one of the hidden spaces at CERN where no one ever goes: the underground tunnels which have housed the archives of the organisation since 1954.
22 physcists were led in complete darkness through the  winding tunnels to another small, enclosed space which they had never seen before. They were placed in different positions in the room, being warned that other people could be in there too – their only sense of the space  and who might be there being generated when they spoke. Unable to see, deprived of their visual sense, they were asked to describe what they saw in this dark-space, after they had listened to an old recording of Bertrand Russell discussing Plato and his cave of representation. 

Wow. It’s striking work. It’s a science/art intervention. Sounds like fun too.

After the awards they served drinks accompanied with an array of pastas and we sat outside on the stairs underneath the red and yellow lanterns, across from the Danube. 

I like Linz~