This year’s Ars Electronica Festival was held from 3-7 September in Linz, Austria. With the theme ‘Panic. Yes/No’, the festival tried to shed light on current societal issues, and focus on the different attitudes that exist for their solutions. SHARESPACE presented its outcomes for the art real-world scenarios in the Deep Space 8K, and also offered visitors more information about the project in two dedicated talks.
Converge 2
Converge 2 is an extension of a work presented last year, and is developed by the researchers and developers at the Ars Electronica Futurelab. In this experience, on-site participants in the Deep Space 8K need to collaborate with each other, and a remote actor. The actor is motion-captured, and through a live audio-stream is able to communicate with the players. This latter aspect is a novel added aspect compared to the year previous. Through the collaboration, the piece aims to bring forward the themes of social isolation and connection.
Foolish Flame
Foolish Flame is the project developed by the external artist team Peter Power and Leon Butler, recruited through the Open Call for Artists 2024. The piece draws parallels between the impact of climate change on environments, and endangered aspects in Irish cultural heritage. The piece utilizes point clouds from affected areas and combines this with Irish dance, singing, instruments, and language.
Talks and presentations
Other than the dedicated Deep Space 8K performances of Converge 2 and Foolish Flame, the SHARESPACE project was represented in some other ways at the festival. First, visitor could learn more general information about the project at the SHARESPACE booth in the Open Futurelab Exhibition. Then, two dedicated talks about the project were organized. The Ethics team within SHARESPACE from DeMontfort University presented outcomes from their Ethics by Design and Good Enough Ethics research. Furthermore, all the artists that collaborated with the SHARESPACE project over the last year gave an artist talk in a panel discussion. Lastly, the project was presented at the Futurelab Night, which is an important event at the Ars Electronica Festival that sheds light on all the big projects that the Ars Electronica Futurelab has been involved in. We are very excited and proud of our results this year, and we are so happy so many people came to see the showings.
