On Friday, 21 July 2023, the conference opened with a keynote speech by Ursula Damm (Professor for Media Environments) entitled »Non-Machines Meet Art« on the special features of non-human actors in art. This was followed by a session on the aesthetics of the maker culture with artistic associate Mindaugas Gapševičius, Prof. Dr Verena Kuni from the Goethe University Frankfurt, and media theorist Dr Yvonne Volkart from the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland.
On the second conference day, Prof. Dr. Kristupas Sabolius from Vilnius University gave a lecture on the “Technics of Compossibility.” Other topics addressed in the countless lectures will range from the do-it-yourself (DIY) and do-it-with-others (DIWO) aesthetics to big data in art and new ideas for multi-species connections. Meanwhile, Director Christl Baur shared details the theme for the next Ars Electronica Festival in his session.
The conference programme was complemented with workshops, performances, an exhibition and a film programme. Here, the highlights included a workshop with the clown David Tann and performances by a number of sound artists from Taiwan. The speakers are not only from other European countries, Lithuania, Greece, Cyprus, the UK, and Spain. Important impetus also came from America, Colombia and Japan.
The full programme can be viewed online.
As part of the COST project Toolkit of Care, this conference explored how emerging technologies, particularly digital technologies, suggest new relationships between artists and their technological tools. How can and should machines and non-machines relate to each other? How can the use of new methods and tools help us experience the environment? How can, or should, we care for and with machines and non-machines? Does thinking about our relationship with tools suggest ways of thinking more generally across boundaries of difference?
The framework of this conference was developed by the professorship of Media Environments (Prof. Ursula Damm), with support from the professorship of Social Science Urban Research (Prof. Dr. Frank Eckardt). The conference was organized by the Institutio Media in collaboration with Bauhaus University Weimar.
