Description of the Ars Electronica Center Center and the Future Lab (taken without change from www.aec.at):
The Ars Electronica Center is the architectural expression of what Ars Electronica is all about: a place of inquiry and discovery, experimentation and exploration, a place that has taken the world of tomorrow as its stage, and that assembles and presents influences from many different ways of thinking and of seeing things. Visitors can encounter the Center on their own or seek guidance from the expert Infotrainers stationed throughout the exhibits.
There are always several exhibitions running simultaneously at the Center. The permanent exhibit “New Views of Humankind” constitutes the core of the curatorial program. Four labs—by no means strictly segregated from one another—examine how we human beings and the world we inhabit have changed, how we influence our environment, and how our world might be in the future.
In addition to this permanent exhibition, there’s lots more to discover. What all exhibits have in common is that they take different standpoints as their point of departure in approaching the subject of humankind, human life today and its future prospects. You’ll find an overview of the current exhibitions and descriptions of the things that await you in them on the Exhibition page.
The new Center—an enhanced and updated version of the 1996 original—opened in 2009, the year Linz served as European Capital of Culture. Attendance figures now surpass all other museums in this city that has dedicated itself to art in all its many forms.
Ars Electronica Futurelab focuses on the future at the nexus of art, technology and society. We consider our works as sketches of possible future scenarios in art-based, experimental forms. In this way, we are aiming at developing contributions through methods and strategies of applied science, the results of which reveal new knowledge and experiences of societal relevance in art and science. The lab’s team bases its work commitment upon transdisciplinary research and work which results in a variety of different disciplines at the lab. Our range of services concentrates on expertise developed throughout the years in fields such as media art, architecture, design, interactive exhibitions, virtual reality and real-time graphics.