The next chapter of the human story will see us become a space-faring species, wandering nomads traversing the solar system within a century. Today public and private sectors across the world are developing strategies to expand cosmic exploration, beginning with the moon, then to Mars by 2033. New technologies, infrastructure for long-term planetary habitation, and emergent markets are the primary drivers of a colonial space expansion. Innovations required to exist “out there” will generate unimaginable wealth and so-called techno-utopian futures for life “down here”. Urgent questions arise: who gets to colonise the solar system and what does it mean that their ideas seed those human and non-human futures? Is it possible to dream of other worlds beyond the those presented to us through a privatised “cosmos imaginarium”? What new stories could we tell so other ways and reasons to be multi-planetary can emerge?

Credit: Natsai Audrey Chieza, Karl Aspelund

Agnes Mayer Brandis’s “Teacup Tools” are part of a “Global Teacup Network” and draw attention to climate-related sciences. Her work consists of a table and machinery for raising two or more teacups individually. Various measuring instruments are built in and onto the tea cups, measuring the environment of the cup.

The Materia Prima exhibition has been produced jointly by LABoral Centro de Arte in Gijón, Spain, and Ars Electronica Export.

Credit: Sergio Redruello / LABoral

There is no region of the world from which we receive more media coverage than the Middle East. The images are of places completely destroyed by war. Some may still remember that the cradle of our culture lies between the Euphrates and Tigris. However, it is nearly impossible for most people to imagine that between bomb attacks and ruins there exists young, contemporary art which continues to develop, which both attaches importance to the preservation of its culture and seeks connection to the Western world.

Credit: tom mesic

Aoife van Linden Tol (IE) is the first artist-in-residence hosted jointly by Ars Electronica and the European Space Agency (ESA). Photo showing Johann-Dietrich Wörner, head of ESA, and Igor Komarov, head of Roskosmos, at the press conference on October 19, 2016, in Darmstadt.

Credit: Ars Electronica / Martin Hieslmair

Within the framework of Art & Science, the Fraunhofer Institute for Image-Based Medicine MEVIS and the media artist Yen Tzu Chang (JP) conducted a workshop for pupils at the Ars Electronica Center in June 2017. Photo is showing Yen Tzu Chang (JP).

Credit: Ars Electronica / Martin Hieslmair

Agnes Mayer Brandis’s “Teacup Tools” are part of a “Global Teacup Network” and draw attention to climate-related sciences. Her work consists of a table and machinery for raising two or more teacups individually. Various measuring instruments are built in and onto the tea cups, measuring the environment of the cup.

The Materia Prima exhibition has been produced jointly by LABoral Centro de Arte in Gijón, Spain, and Ars Electronica Export.

Credit: Sergio Redruello / LABoral

Origin stories of a multi-planetary diaspora

In the coming century, humans will become a space-faring species, forming settlements on other planets, even traversing the solar system as wandering nomads. Advancing technologies for inter-planetary habitability to enable new market prospecting underpins current goals to achieve low earth orbit to the moon and Mars by 2033. Energy, water, food and material security – innovations developed for extreme conditions “out there” – are set to be generators of wealth and utopian earthly futures. Seventy-two countries have a space program, while only the government space agencies NASA, CNSA, and RFSA possess human space flight capabilities. Meanwhile, the private sector is propelling advancement. Urgent questions arise: who gets to colonize the life beyond Earth, and what does it mean for those ideas to seed those human futures? Is it possible to dream of other worlds beyond those presented to us through a privatized “cosmos Imaginarium”?

Credit: Jürgen Grünwald

Aoife van Linden Tol (IE) is the first artist-in-residence hosted jointly by Ars Electronica and the European Space Agency (ESA). Photo showing the Schiaparelli lander.

Credit: Ars Electronica / Martin Hieslmair

With its inhumane and environmentally destructive production methods, fast fashion has long since surpassed all boundaries. Fashion & Technology offers alternatives to the system with new, sustainable processes. The participatory workshop situation *In the Lab: Processing Fashion* aims to make them visible and tangible. Material development, shaping techniques and design processes that take place before product solutions, are the focus of attention.

Credit: Jürgen Grünwald

LABoral’s existing FabLab – and all its machines, tools and equipment – has been transferred to the exhibition floor. In workshops visitors will be trained to use them, and in doing so become part of this discursive exhibition project.

The Materia Prima exhibition has been produced jointly by LABoral Centro de Arte in Gijón, Spain, and Ars Electronica Export.

Credit: Sergio Redruello / LABoral

The Nature of Shadows

Photos from the 2010 Too Cool for School Art and Science Fair that was was held at Harbourfront Centre in Toronto on 8 May 2010.

Learn more at www.artandsciencefair.ca.

The third recipient of the residency staged under the auspices of the Art & Science Network is the artists’ collective Quadrature (Jan Bernstein, Juliane Götz and Sebastian Neitsch, all DE). In 2016, they were selected from among the 322 applicants from 53 countries and spent their residency at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile and at the Ars Electronica Futurelab in Austria. Picture is showing their visit to the headquarter of ESO in Garching, Germany.

Credit: Claudia Schnugg

Impression from the opening of the exhibition "The Alchemists of Art and Science" at the Ars Electronica Center Linz.

Credit: Ars Electronica / Martin Hieslmair

Aoife van Linden Tol (IE) is the first artist-inresidence hosted jointly by Ars Electronica and the European Space Agency (ESA). During the artandscience@ESA Residency the artist spent several weeks at the European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) in Noordwijk, the Netherlands.

Credit: Aoife Van Linden Tol

We are all in a constant correspondence with the universe. It speaks to us ever so subtly, showering us with invisible remnants of our mutual distant past, across the magnitude of space and time. Yet in the infinitely grand scale of all things universal, one tends to neglect the infinitely small. It is this omnipresent chronicle of the universe that is our most intimate connection to the everywhere and always, shared with us through the smallest of postcards and parcels. Within the journey of each traveling particle there lies a piece of a common history, a memoir of a voyage spanning billions of years, connecting us, in this very point in space and time, to the dawn of our universe.

Credit: Yuri Tanaka, Pavle Dinulović, Umut Kose, Chris Bruckmayr

CERN and Ars Electronica awarded the Collide@CERN Ars Electronica Award in 2015, which is part of the European Digital Art and Science Network art&science – an international initiative offering artists the chance to spend several weeks at research facilities like CERN and the Ars Electronica Futurelab.

A group photo showing the jury 2015 (from left to right): Veronika Liebl (Ars Electronica), Mike Stubbs (FACT), Gerfried Stocker (Ars Electronica), Mónica Bello (Arts@CERN), Michael Doser (CERN), Horst Hörtner (Ars Electronica Futurelab), Claudia Schnugg (Ars Electronica Futurelab)

Credit: Magdalena Leitner

The year 2016 hosted a new fair within Frankfurt Book Fair: THE ARTS+ was home to the culture and creative scene. On October 20, 2016, art&science Residency winners Quadrature and Aoife Van Linden Tol presented their innovative concepts, projects and ideas at the "Espresso for the mind" event. Photo shoing Aoife Van Linden Tol (IE).

Credit: Ars Electronica / Martin Hieslmair

Aoife van Linden Tol (IE) is the first artist-in-residence hosted jointly by Ars Electronica and the European Space Agency (ESA). Photo showing a talk with ESA engineer Thomas Walloschek (DE).

Credit: Ars Electronica / Martin Hieslmair

50 years after the Apollo 11 lunar landing, we are seeing another strong push for space exploration: from new and renewed space programs in developed and developing countries to innovative technologies and commercial services from private industry. Along the way, cultural production for outer space becomes crucial for humanity as we expand beyond the earthbound. In the past, the desire for exploration and expansion had a profound impact on how we imagined planetary futures. What shall we imagine now? In this exhibition, six projects from the Space Exploration Initiative of MIT Media Lab are asking the same question and bringing possibilities to the (im)possible space: All the projects were successfully deployed and performed in a zero-gravity parabolic flight last year. They are hopes beyond solutions, imaginations, more than facts. Our effort addresses outer space as a critical territory that must be inhabited—imaginatively, artistically, scientifically and collaboratively.

Credit: Jürgen Grünwald

The jury of the first artist-in-residence hosted jointly by Ars Electronica and the European Space Agency (ESA). The European Digital Art and Science Network is an international initiative offering artists the chance to spend several weeks at both the ESA and the Ars Electronica Futurelab.

The group photo showing the jury 2016 consisting of representatives of Ars Electronica, ESA and members of the cultural partner institutions.

Credit: Ars Electronica / Martin Hieslmair

Impression from the opening of the exhibition "The Alchemists of Art and Science" at the Ars Electronica Center Linz.

Credit: Ars Electronica / Martin Hieslmair

Organic Primitive Bioplastics challenges endless data accumulation and memory, posing an ephemeral paradigm for interacting with objects, driven by organic intelligences. Using a library of biomaterials to give objects a “voice” to communicate, everyday things are transformed into ephemeral information displays that change color, odor, and form in response to fluids.

Credit: Jürgen Grünwald

Water is the medium that carries chemical and biological information. It is fundamental for survival and evolution of life. From walking in the rain to working in laboratory - water is ever present and thus important from human-interaction standpoint. It is also safe to directly touch and consume by humans. Our goal is to use this natural medium, to represent data through calm, ubiquitous computing interfaces that leverage the users intuitive knowledge of the world. Hence, we have created the “Programmable Droplets” system that can use droplets in our environment and program them for information manipulation and human interaction.

Credit: Udayan Umapathi

Aoife van Linden Tol (IE) is the first artist-inresidence hosted jointly by Ars Electronica and the European Space Agency (ESA). During the artandscience@ESA Residency the artist spent several weeks at the European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) in Noordwijk, the Netherlands.

Credit: ESA–C. Carreau, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

This project aims to explore AI-assisted human-machine integration techniques for overcoming impairments and disabilities. By connecting assistive hardware and auditory/visual/tactile sensors and actuators with a user-adaptive and interactive learning framework, we propose and develop a proof of concept of our “xDiversity AI platform” to meet the various abilities, needs, and demands in our society. Our final goal is a social design and deployment of the assistive technologies towards an inclusive society.

Credit: Jürgen Grünwald

Photo showing Jonathan Keep's (UK) work Seed Bed at the Ars Electronica Center's Elements of Art and Science exhibition.

Credit: Martin Hieslmair

Photo showing Jonathan Keep's (UK) work Seed Bed at the Ars Electronica Center's Elements of Art and Science exhibition.

Credit: Martin Hieslmair

LightWing II creates a mysterious sensation of tactile data. In this interactive installation, a kinetic construction is augmented with stereoscopic 3D projections and spatial sound. Flexible carbon fiber rods hold a large transparent membrane in tension. A light touch sets the delicate wing-like structure into a rotational oscillation and enables the visitor to navigate through holographic spaces and responsive narratives.

Credit: tom mesic

In the age of machine learning, robotics, and technological dependency, questions of what it means to be human are reflected back to us in new ways by our synthetic creations. Issues of creativity, authorship, inspiration, and philosophy (which have traditionally been recognized as exclusively human traits) come into question as we find ourselves amongst ever more intelligent and capable machines. Works from the human-machine collaboration series explore these questions by using art as tangible philosophy.

Credit: Jürgen Grünwald

Display designed for listening to plants.

Photos from the 2010 Too Cool for School Art and Science Fair that was was held at Harbourfront Centre in Toronto on 8 May 2010.

Learn more at www.artandsciencefair.ca.

The year 2016 hosted a new fair within Frankfurt Book Fair: THE ARTS+ was home to the culture and creative scene. On October 20, 2016, art&science Residency winners Quadrature and Aoife Van Linden Tol presented their innovative concepts, projects and ideas at the "Espresso for the mind" event.

Credit: Ars Electronica / Martin Hieslmair

Origin stories of a multi-planetary diaspora

In the coming century, humans will become a space-faring species, forming settlements on other planets, even traversing the solar system as wandering nomads. Advancing technologies for inter-planetary habitability to enable new market prospecting underpins current goals to achieve low earth orbit to the moon and Mars by 2033. Energy, water, food and material security – innovations developed for extreme conditions “out there” – are set to be generators of wealth and utopian earthly futures. Seventy-two countries have a space program, while only the government space agencies NASA, CNSA, and RFSA possess human space flight capabilities. Meanwhile, the private sector is propelling advancement. Urgent questions arise: who gets to colonize the life beyond Earth, and what does it mean for those ideas to seed those human futures? Is it possible to dream of other worlds beyond those presented to us through a privatized “cosmos Imaginarium”?

Credit: Jürgen Grünwald

50 years after the Apollo 11 lunar landing, we are seeing another strong push for space exploration: from new and renewed space programs in developed and developing countries to innovative technologies and commercial services from private industry. Along the way, cultural production for outer space becomes crucial for humanity as we expand beyond the earthbound. In the past, the desire for exploration and expansion had a profound impact on how we imagined planetary futures. What shall we imagine now? In this exhibition, six projects from the Space Exploration Initiative of MIT Media Lab are asking the same question and bringing possibilities to the (im)possible space: All the projects were successfully deployed and performed in a zero-gravity parabolic flight last year. They are hopes beyond solutions, imaginations, more than facts. Our effort addresses outer space as a critical territory that must be inhabited—imaginatively, artistically, scientifically and collaboratively.

Credit: Jürgen Grünwald

This installation, named (un)shaped, utilizes bubbles in water as a medium. Pouring droplets into water gently from the top, bubbles are generated in it. This phenomenon is called an antibubble, which is a droplet encapsulated by a thin film of gas.

Credit: Jürgen Grünwald

Photo showing Jonathan Keep's (UK) work Seed Bed at the Ars Electronica Center's Elements of Art and Science exhibition.

Credit: Martin Hieslmair

Organic Primitive Bioplastics challenges endless data accumulation and memory, posing an ephemeral paradigm for interacting with objects, driven by organic intelligences. Using a library of biomaterials to give objects a “voice” to communicate, everyday things are transformed into ephemeral information displays that change color, odor, and form in response to fluids.

Credit: Jürgen Grünwald

The last decades have seen an increased momentum and buzz around the idea of a connected world. The evolution of technologies such as the Internet of Things, in which objects are embedded with electronic systems in a sophisticated network that enables the collection and exchange of data, is disrupting the way we live.

Greiner, as a leading global manufacturer of plastic products for a wide range of industries, explores the application of those new technologies. This exhibition presents a sample of 5 different mockups: products manufactured by Greiner which, in combination with electronic components, have the potential to sense and act according to inputs gathered from their environment. These new features allow communication between products, systems and devices, providing an enhanced user experience that goes beyond the materiality of the product itself.

Credit: Jürgen Grünwald

This artwork documents over twenty-thousand patents exposing socially’ hazardous information technology. In Sociality, Cirio has collected and rated inventions submitted to the U.S. patent office. He invited participants to share, flag, and ban these technologies designed to monitor and manipulate social behaviors.

Credit: Jürgen Grünwald

50 years after the Apollo 11 lunar landing, we are seeing another strong push for space exploration: from new and renewed space programs in developed and developing countries to innovative technologies and commercial services from private industry. Along the way, cultural production for outer space becomes crucial for humanity as we expand beyond the earthbound. In the past, the desire for exploration and expansion had a profound impact on how we imagined planetary futures. What shall we imagine now? In this exhibition, six projects from the Space Exploration Initiative of MIT Media Lab are asking the same question and bringing possibilities to the (im)possible space: All the projects were successfully deployed and performed in a zero-gravity parabolic flight last year. They are hopes beyond solutions, imaginations, more than facts. Our effort addresses outer space as a critical territory that must be inhabited—imaginatively, artistically, scientifically and collaboratively.

Credit: Jürgen Grünwald