Blog Archive for Tag: ars electronica

I am finally back from vacation and offline time and now fully dedicated to preparation and production of all my projects, workshops and stuff at 2nd city Marienstrasse Ars Electronica 07. Ars Electronica team here in Linz is working under full steam to get everything done till the festival starts 5.9.-11.9. 2007.

First samples and objects from the all over design I did for Marienstrasse are already done. On the left you see a 50x50x50 cm default Second Life crate. In total there will be at around 25 plain and also printed cubes scattered over Marienstrasse. I love the default wood version! You find these standard cubes in Second Life everywhere.

I’ll keep you posted about progress of production of Ars Electronica 2007. It’s going to be big and fun!

Ars Electronica invited me as main artist of “Second City” which is part of the festival this year (4.-11.9.07). I am developing a concept and design involving other artists in collaboration. Besides some solo pieces like the “Tree” installation or “Chat” intervention there will be a series of workshops and installations. Most of them are especially developed for 2nd city, some like “WoW” are already known. As the title “Second City” implies metaverses like Second Life are the main topic of this part of the festival. Second City takes place in a deserted shopping street in the center of Linz. Shopping, trading and creating stuff in workshops is one of the undelaying themes in 2nd City. Beside Meatvers related pieces there will be also the the theme exhibtion and more stuff in Marienstrasse.

Artists in collaboration are: Linda Kostowski & Sascha Pohflepp, Eva & Franco Mattes, Joachim Stein, Walter Langelaar, Andreas Lange as well as Jan Northof & Tobias Neiseke and Jürgen Höbarth in the workshop and Second Life support team.

More detailed infos to come….

Second City

This year’s festival is “going public” too before the backdrop of our (involuntary) digital transparency and the (voluntary) relinquishment of our privacy. “We are very intentionally running this “public sphere risk” because this step—going public, going into the public realm—is the only logical and consistent way to approach GOODBYE PRIVACY,” said Ars Electronica Artistic Director Gerfried Stocker. In going about this, urban spaces and infrastructure serve not only as a stage but also as a medium that blends with artistic interventions and, in turn, becomes a message. The epicenter of this “infiltration” is Marienstraße, a street that seems to be a dead zone in the middle of downtown Linz. The prevalence of vacant retail spaces here strongly evokes the atmosphere of a stage set and makes pedestrians feel like they’re walking past the artificial buildings of a virtual city. Ars Electronica will put these premises to use and transform Marienstraße into Second City, into the portal between reality and artificiality. What will be staged here during the week of September 5-11 is not some sort of urban renewal program; rather, this initiative has a strictly transient, virtual character. It is real artificiality and, conversely, artificial reality. The festival’s traditional propagation is thus endowed with a new quality—not just out into the city but throughout the cityscape.

www.aec.at

Unfortunately my concept for Second City “Sandbox” at Pfarrplatz in Linz won’t be realised for Ars Electronica. But I am thinking of doing this project after Ars Electronica in Berlin in autum. In fact I shouldn’t design a whole Sandbox like I did in this image for Linz. I think it’s better to invite people for 3 days to build own objects in sandbox style. I wonder how greefing attacks could look like in RL? 😉 I love sandboxes. It’ll be fun.

Find some typical Second Life sandbox pictures on flickr.

Good news! Upcoming project Chat is part of the Second City area I am working on at Ars Electronica. But I will talk about this whole Ars-Second-Life topic later.

The project Chat is of course the next stepp coming from the project Speech Bubble. In fact the concept of Chat is even older than the Speech Bubble project.

Project description goes something like this:

Chat is an interactive installation and a performance in
public space.
Similar to online computer games like Second Life or
World of Warcraft two persons are having a conversation
by writing text messages on a keyboard. The speech
bubble floating above the participants head displays the
written words of this ‘player’ in real time. The wireless
keyboard is connected to a PDA. A very small and light
weight LED beamer projects the text messages on the
translucent speech bubble. The whole equipment and
the speech bubble are attached to a stick which is carried
by a technician. These two technicians do follow each
participant individually so that the speech bubble stays
above the ‘players’ head even if they move.
It is recommended to show this piece at night or dark
places. Crowded clubs or conferences with many people
on a spot are a good environment to run this installation.

There is a more detailed german text version which will be translated for the AEC catalogue.

More infos about Ars Electronica and Second Life coming soon. Nice projects and workshops. It sgoing to be fun.

(By the way, the comment of Ahmet made me blog this. Sure, everybody wants the interactive speech bubble. Although I do like the first version very much)