Ars Electronica Futurelab

Ars Electronica Futurelab Andreas J. Hirsch Edited by Horst Hörtner, Roland Haring, Hideaki Ogawa Alchemists of the Future Ars Electronica Futurelab The First 25 Years and Beyond ARS ELECTRONICA FUTURELAB 25 Years of Ars Electronica Futurelab The creation of the Futurelab was in equal measure an accident or a stroke of luck (right people, right time, right place) and the unavoidable consequence of the original Ars Electronica idea of a merging of art, technology, and society. It was certainly also an urgent necessity—actually the only chance—to make the planned Ars Electronica Center with its groundbreaking innovations, high artistic standards, and clear didactical goals a fully functioning “Museum of the Future.” In mid-1995, entrusted with this task, we were faced with so many technical and creative challenges that there was simply only one way forward: putting together a team of ambitious and visionary artists and technicians and striving to turn this great vision, which up to that point had existed only on paper, into reality. To realize his idea of an Ars Electronica Center, Hannes Leopoldseder had in advance invited experts and artists from all over the world to develop visions for this new kind of center and, not surprisingly, the invitees outdid themselves with spectacular scenarios ranging from LED wallpaper with which all walls would be covered (at that time there were not yet LED flatscreens on the market) to kinetic components that would change the building constantly. Alas, there was then the reality, a reality in which it was not enough to cobble these kinds of prototypes together for a short demonstration at a fair or art exhibition, but rather one in which they had to stand up to the real world of permanent exhibitions where they were on show six days a week, with only one day for maintenance and repair. Thus, there was the necessity of developing most of the exhibition themes and exhibits in-house, but also the necessity of having a suitable team for their continual maintenance and further development, and one that was directly on-site so that appropriate measures could quickly be taken if computers crashed, mechanical interfaces broke down, or self-made hardware melted down. Faced with all these challenges, in retrospect it seems almost a miracle that we did not lose heart and that the responsible authorities from the City of Linz continued to back us. But what other choices did we have? After all, it was clear to everyone that the Ars Electronica Center could not become just another science center that also dealt with digital technologies. No, it was to become a prototype, a Museum of the Future in which one could work with and reflect on the possibilities of the new digital technologies—and not merely in groups of experts but together with the general public. It was therefore particularly important to have people for whom the commonality of art and technology was a given, and who also did not shy away from taking on projects for which there were no existing models, such as the elevator-floor projection, the bold brainchild of Roy Ascott. This project could be realized only shortly before the opening of the Ars Electronica Center, as a few months before, a new projector had come on the market that could be installed in the small niche under the elevator floor with a deflection mirror and special rear-projection film. The greatest challenge, however, would be to convince the technicians from the elevator company to give us an interface for the elevator control to enable us to synchronize the projections with the movements of the elevator. The cost that the company initially quoted us for the few lines of additional code in the elevator control exceeded that for the projector. Without the technical expertise of our in-house team, we could probably never have negotiated a reasonable price. Our own team ended up developing the animation, soundtrack, synchronization, and controller. An even greater adventure was the journey to one of the top attractions of the first Ars Electronica Center, the flight simulator Humphrey. No one remembers how this name came about, but it stuck. The bold design, the impressive electromechanical lifting mechanism, and the combination of helicopter flight images with virtual 3D models in a specially constructed VR helmet became a trademark, as did Ken Goldberg’s Telegarden and, of course, the CAVE—the first of its kind, incidentally, to go into operation in Europe and the first in the world that was made available to the general public in the context of a regular exhibition. It was also the CAVE that provided the key to establishing a permanent team and with it the formal founding of the Ars Electronica Futurelab. For it was only the great interest that industry had in utilizing the expertise of the Ars Electronica Futurelab to test the practical applications of virtual reality, internet-based services, new user interfaces, and much more that provided us with the financial resources necessary to realize the idea we had nurtured from the very beginning: making the Ars Electronica Center not only an exhibition space but also a venue for research and development and thus also a place for shaping the future. That a world-renowned laboratory and atelier for the synergy between art, technology, and society has developed from this starting position—one that also has become an important factor for the economic success of Ars Electronica, is due to Horst Hörtner and his tremendous staff, to whom this book is dedicated. Gerfried Stocker Artistic Director Ars Electronica Contents 8 Into Unknown Territory: Alchemists of the Future 16 Ars Electronica 23 Ars Electronica Center 28 Milestones in the History of Ars Electronica Futurelab 32 Virtual Worlds The Promise of Shared Immersive Insight 37 Virtual Anatomy 43 CAVE 54 ARSBOX and VRizer 60 INSTAR 65 Humphrey I & II 69 Gulliver’s World 77 Deep Space 8K 79 Papyrate’s Island 94 Poetic Systems Creating Novel Cultural Experience 102 Das Rheingold—Visionized 113 The Visualization of Le Sacre du Printemps The Next Generation of Visualization Technology 124 Source.Code 129 ZeitRaum 132 Building Bridges 140 Ars Electronica Center Media Facade & Facade Terminal 142 The Art of Swarms Artificial Collectives on the Rise 157 Klangwolke ABC 163 Spaxels 165 SwarmOS 170 Swarm Arena 176 Future Ink 178 Humanity and Robotinity Toward a New Paradigm of Co-Existence 185 Geminoid Research Collaboration 186 RoboLab 188 Human Robot Harmony Humanoid Robot “Honda ASIMO” 193 Robotinity Exhibition 196 Communication with Robot Cars 200 MANUACT 204 Code for Matter Computing Goes Biological 211 BioLab, BrainLab, FabLab, RoboLab 213 Project Genesis 220 BioInk 224 Oribotics 227 Artificial Intelligence Forging Companions for Creative Work 234 Understanding Artificial Intelligence 242 AI x Music 244 Mahler Unfinished 245 Ricercar—An AI-based Musical Companion 246 Art Thinking Future Catalysts Become Alchemists of the Future 250 Shadowgram 253 Art Thinking 266 Ars Electronica Japan 269 Tokyo Midtown x Ars Electronica School of the Future 271 Future Innovators Summit (FIS) 276 Perspectives 279 Future Alchemists 281 Photo credit 284 Imprint Into Unknown Territory: Alchemists of the Future Into Unknown Territory: Alchemists of the Future 9 Into Unknown Territory: Alchemists of the Future In the dimly lit laboratory space, two drones ascend into flight. Their lights flare, and in midair they begin to sketch the lines of Vitruvian Man, the human being in proportions, similar to what had been drawn by Leonardo da Vinci more than 500 years earlier. Some 9,000 kilometers to the east, a young woman stands amidst a swarm of ground bots, their LED screens facing upwards. She holds an Olympic Fire torch and—in an inherently Promethean gesture—shares the light with the swarm, whose displays readily pick up and pass on the virtual flame. In the blink of an eye, another space, containing unfathomable dimensions of virtuality, turns into a modern version of a dissecting theater, with a human heart, rendered in huge dimensions from a living patient’s real-time medical data, beating in the middle of the space. Crossing a bridge between two buildings, people on their way through a corporate compound, by their very movements turn this bridge into a musical instrument, letting their working day resound. On a late summer night on the banks of a river in the heart of Europe, a huge swarm of drones become airborne for their first public performance, turning the dusk skies into a canvas full of moving images, their lines drawn from the drone’s dots of light. All of this—and an incredible amount more—originates from an atelier- laboratory that is located right on the bank of that river, the Danube. It is an institution like no other, with an eventful history of 25 years now behind it. Compared with the common academic or industry research and development lab, this unit is rather small, comprising a staff of a mere three to five dozen people. It is neither an academic institute nor a corporate department, but a hybrid of artistic atelier and research laboratory. And there is a special third element, a philosophical and profane form of modern “alchemy,” which allows for the team at the “Futurelab” to also be considered as “Alchemists of the Future.” In fact, the people working there embody that fruitful dialogue between art and science, which often leads to astonishing and unconventional results. An ongoing dialogue between art and science is taking place among their team, which is assembled from artists, programmers, and engineers, as well as within the individual Futurelab members, their working biographies, and the multiple skills that they bring to their creations.

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