2017 Ars Electronica Festival Kicks Off Next Week

This year's Ars Electronica Festival begins on Thursday, September 7th. The theme, AI - The Other I, really makes its presence felt on the festival program, which is more extensive than ever before.

The lineup of 500+ events features over 1,000 artists, scientists, tech experts, hackers, educators, entrepreneurs and activists from all over the world appearing in exhibitions, talks, workshops, presentations, concerts and performances at 12 Linz locations ranging from Bruckner University at the foot of Pöstlingberg to POSTCITY adjacent to the train station.

This year's highlights include such Festival classics as the CyberArts exhibition showcasing the 2017 Prix Ars Electronica prizewinners, the Big Concert Night that Markus Poschner is conducting for the first time, as well as the Theme Symposium and Theme Exhibition. Plus, there are several new formats premiering on the festival program.

The first is an OPENING SYMPOSIUM at which experts from East and West will consider "How Culture Shapes Technology." ARS ELECTRONICA GALLERY SPACES subsumes exhibitions, conferences and a collectors' program dedicated to growing mutual interest among the media art genre and the art market.

Festivalgoers can look forward to their first jumbo-format HACKATHON focusing on brain-computer interfaces, the FUTURE IN A NUTSHELL conference on the coming decade's 10 key technologies, and this year's grand finale concert-Philip Glass' 20 ETUDES FOR PIANO performed by Maki Namekawa and accompanied by Cori Olan's visualizations.

But that's not all!

This year's Ars Electronica Festival features several new and interesting venues too. The exhibition spaces in the Lower Levels of POSTCITY are even more sprawling than last year and, without a doubt, a must-see festival highlight in their own right!

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