Photo Credit: Courtesy of Ars Electronica

Ars Electronica 2023: Who Owns the Truth?

Date: 6–10 September 2023
Where: POSTCITY Linz, Bahnhofpl. 12, 4020 Linz, Austria

From September 6 to 10 2023, Ars Electronica—Europe’s largest festival for art, technology and society—once again invites artists, scientists, developers, designers, entrepreneurs, and activists from all over the world to the legendary POSTCITY Linz.

The theme of Ars Electronica 2023 is straight to the central issues of our time: truth and property, authority and sovereignty. Can one own truth? Is there a right to truth, and if it belongs to someone, what authority and responsibility would that involve?

This year, the festival has secured exciting partnerships with leading names in the arts and culture industry, such as the Museo Nacional del Prado and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid, the Grand Palais Immersif in Paris, the Salzburg Festival, and the Biennale Musica 2023 Venezia. Notably, two European Capitals of Culture, Bad Ischl 2024 and Oulu (Finland) 2026, will also be involved in the festival this autumn. Additionally, renowned organizations like MEET Digital Culture Center in Milan, WRO Media Art Biennale in Wrocław, Arizona State University, and Leonardo—The International Society of the Arts, Sciences, and Technology—will also be participating.

Leonardo Activities at Ars Electronica 2023

At Ars Electronica 2023, Leonardo will organize two workshops: “CripTech Lab: Metaverse Reclaimed,” which uses speculative storytelling and worldbuilding protocols to imagine a collective future in the metaverse that is open and accessible to all; and “Our Future Life in Lower Earth Orbit (L.E.O.)” with our partners from Our Future Life (OFL) project, which explores positive scenarios to transcend earthly barriers and boundaries of ownership.

The workshops will be published on Ars Electronica website here soon: https://ars.electronica.art/who-owns-the-truth/en/workshops/

In conjunction with the Meteor Studio at ASU, Leonardo will also organize the exhibition, ConstellationXR by artist William T. Ayton, featuring an iconic tower and orbiting spheres of XR assets to inspire insight, navigate pathways, and unveil patterns of conductivity portals encircling the globe as a vehicle for planetary healing.

CripTech Lab: Metaverse Reclaimed Workshop

Who owns the metaverse? XR is celebrated as a space of profound possibility where a user can transcend their physical limitations. The reality is that the metaverse remains closed to many. From software to hardware, immersive media present significant access frictions for disabled users and creators. Worlds routinely exclude experiences by and for people of color. Imagine a collaboratively built and governed metaverse. This workshop builds on Leonardo’s work on access as a creative practice in such programs as CripTech Incubator. Orienting participants to practices in aesthetic access, it includes a 3D object description playshop with AR artworks. Its centerpiece is a scaffolded speculative design exercise where participants collectively envision a metaverse based on shared principles of social justice. Using speculative storytelling and worldbuilding protocols, this design lab invites participants to imagine a collective future in the metaverse that is open and accessible to all. 

PLEASE NOTE:
Number of participants: 20
Language: English

Registration required. Workshops are open for FESTIVALPASS+, FESTIVALPASS or One-Day-Pass Holders only.

Learn more at ars.electronica.art or REGISTER HERE.

Our Future Life in Lower Earth Orbit (L.E.O.) Workshop

Our Future Life in Lower Earth Orbit (L.E.O.) workshop explores positive scenarios to transcend earthly barriers and boundaries of ownership. Who owns space? Who owns Our Future Life? How can we co-create open access to an interplanetary, intersectional, and interspecies world? 

Using Critical Response Process (CRP), we pose questions based on insights drawn from preliminary research of Our Future Life (OFL), a global storytelling challenge to crowdsource short-form video of a positive collective future for all. 

In creative breakouts, attendees storyboard AI-generated visions of Our Future Life L.E.O., then reconvene for design sprint review and feedback. Workshop input will inform research findings and help shape OFL. Participants are invited to submit digital art to OFL global challenge, or share works-in-progress through media with Leonardo and partner organizations. OFL L.E.O. builds on JEDI Space & AI for Good.

PLEASE NOTE:
Number of participants: 25
Language: English

Registration required. Workshops are open for FESTIVALPASS+, FESTIVALPASS or One-Day-Pass Holders only.

Learn more at ars.electronica.art or REGISTER HERE.

ConstellationXR Exhibition

Ayton’s ConstellationXR is the inaugural exhibit wrapping Earth with a network of digital art installations. The XR art features an iconic tower and orbiting spheres of digital assets to illuminate and transmute invisible spaces of power as interfaces of healing. 

ConstellationXR invites humanity to exchange ideas, engage in meditative flow, and navigate unseen pathways and currents of human connectivity. Ultimately, ConstellationXR unveils patterns of conductivity portals encircling the globe as a vehicle for planetary healing. Ayton infuses the XR art with the guiding lights of Hope, Empathy, Awe and Love (HEAL) required to counter human despair and collective trauma from chronic social isolation, disasters, eco-grief and anxiety. Launched in Linz, future installation sites draw attention to areas of regeneration, urban concentration, ecological concern, spiritual energy and personal inspiration. 

Building on Ayton’s New Babel, a 10-story tall AR tower in Union Square, NYC (2019), the project sees towers as channels for communication, intelligence and energy exchange. ConstellationXR embraces the spiraling, colossal column of New Babel, and transforms the original rotating globe above into cascading XR orbs of digital art. Embodying metaphorical, imagined worlds, ConstellationXR draws on Ayton’s Interplanetary VR Sustainable Futures installation, a VR galaxy-gallery of 17 VR orbs related to the 17 UNSDGs with art by 15+ artists connecting space exploration with earth sustainability through a reconstructed planetary assemblage.

Visit the exhibition page on ars.electronica.art

Photo Credit: ConstellationXR / William T. Ayton (GB), Photo: William T. Ayton