Kepler's Garden_Martin Honzik, Director of Ars Electronica Festival

Hardly any other phrase has been used so often in recent months as that the world will be a different place after this crisis – prophetically, often as a glimmer of hope, more often as a threat. Is this true, and if so, what will be the changes? This question is the focus of this year’s Ars Electronica.

Following last year’s brilliant 40-year festival, which brought more artists, exhibitors and international experts to Linz than ever before, this year Ars Electronica is going on a journey, or rather the festival itself is becoming a journey – a journey through “Kepler’s Gardens”. A journey through the networked biotopes and ecosystems in which people all over the world are working to develop and shape our future, and in these days that means above all working to save our future. A journey to and with many committed communities that have already begun not only to think about the current problems, but to work on concrete ideas, actions and solutions. Places, initiatives and institutions where artists and scientists work together, challenge society and try out new alliances and forms of cooperation.

So “Kepler’s Gardens” is not only the name of the new festival venue in Linz, which will move from the Postcity to the Kepler Gardens on the well-equipped JKU campus and transform its beautiful and extensive parks into an extraordinary festival site.

“Kepler’s Gardens” is also the metaphor for the organizational principle of the festival in a global lockdown: a festival that will not dive into the network and disappear there, but will emerge from the network and manifest itself in many places around the world, distributed and networked. Starting in Linz and working with partners from Ars Electronica’s extraordinarily large international network that has grown over 40 years, “real” events will take place in many places, with “real” artists and scientists for “real” audiences, all of which will be networked into a festival from September 9 to 13.

With this simultaneity and duality of local-physical and globally networked events, Ars Electronica will once again become an exciting experimental laboratory and prototype for a next-level networking that will focus primarily on new forms and possibilities of fusion and coexistence of analog and digital, real and virtual, physical and telematic proximity. Last but not least, “Kepler’s Gardens” is also a clear commitment to science and a fact-based and responsible way of dealing with each other, a statement for science and art, not only as a fuel for the economy, but as the basis for culture and civilization.

“With this simultaneity and duality of local-physical and globally networked events, Ars Electronica is once again becoming an exciting experimental laboratory and prototype for a next-level networking that is primarily concerned with new forms and possibilities,”

This is and has always been one of the central tasks of art and culture, a task that can only be achieved in cooperation with science, technology and society.

Into the Third Garden_Dongyeun Lee, Vice President of Korea National University of Arts / Professor of School of Korean Traditional Arts, KARTS

In the late 20th-century South Korea, cities were filled with two different spaces. On the one hand, most of them transformed into residential housing dominated by apartments. On the other hand, as high-speed information network and digital devices were installed in urban areas, a unique community culture was created in online spaces. The former formed a very collective and physical world, whereas the latter created a highly dispersed and virtual world. Many cities around the world have similar forms. Especially, the big cities in South Korea naturally accommodate such interactions between a tight, physical life and a flexible, virtual life. Transitioning into the future smart city involves the envisioning of a dramatic utopia where two different spaces interact. Now, we are living in the time of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Garden of Third Life is a real and metaphorical concept that explores a daily life that involves transition into the long duration of the pandemic. 'Third Life' literally implies the arrival of the third life. The physical life in the real space is called 'first life', while the fictive life in the virtual space may be named 'third life'. 'Third life' refers to a new lifestyle that involves the intersection between the virtuality in reality and the reality in virtuality which results from the interaction between the real space and the virtual space followed by the collapse of the boundary. New advanced technologies such as VR, AR, AI, hologram, and IoT invite us to the world of the third life.

The third life emphatically signals the arrival of the era that features the fateful dialogue and the unavoidable coexistence between ecology and technology. In the era of disaster capitalism, risk society, anthropocene, and pandemics, we are unable to find a new life for humankind with just technological advancement that lacks ecological imagination. Likewise, with just the ecological imagination that lacks technological advancement, we are bound to end up in the lonely life of Robinson Crusoe or cannot stop the overwhelming consumerist greed of humankind. In that sense, Garden of Third Life is a real and metaphorical concept that carries the ecological and technological reflections on the future human life.

In the Lecture Day 2. Human & Nature, we are looking into the relationship between human and nature through the presentation of experts from various fields including history of science, bioart criticism and art. 

[Topic / Lecturer]

• Kepler's Garden, Lovelock's Gaia: Natureculture in the Anthropocene
  Buhmsoon Park(Science Historian, Director of Center for Anthropocene Studies at KAIST)

• Ad Fontes: Art in the Era of the New Normal
  Heahyun Cheon(Assistant Professor of Department of Consilience at Korea  Polytechnic University, Art Director of 2019 Davinci Creative: Living Life)

• ‘Third Nature’ in Our Neighborhood: Paulownia tomentosa Steudel
  Soyo Lee(Lecturer, Department of the Arts, Korea National University of Arts)

In Lecture Day 3. Human & Local Community, we are looking into the relationship between human and Society, especially within the local community where we live. Three lecturers from various fields, including urban research, architecture, and activism art will talk about different issues of the local and community. 

[Topic / Lecturer]

• Re-cognition of Global-Local under COVID-19 Pandemic
  Hanbyul Shim(Research Fellow of the Center for Asian Cities,Seoul National University)

• Feminist Insurgent Planning for a sustainable transition
  Eunseon Park(Director of Listen to the City)

• TVPR-Tuvalu Project: Collective Knowledge and Architectural Media
  Hyunseok Kang(Founding Partner of SGHS, Author of TVPR)

In Lecture Day 4. Human & Virtual Reality, we are looking into the relationship between technology-driven society and human connectivity with a specific term of “Third Life“. Third Life is a new lifestyle that can interact with virtual space and real space. Through the presentations, lecturers will talk about diverse discourses around in which we are crossing culture and science, arts and technology.

[Topic / Lecturer]

• What is Third Life? : The Advent of New Lifestyle
  Dongyeun Lee(Vice President of Korea National University of Arts, Professor of School of Korean Traditional Arts, K-Arts)

• Cultivating the ‘Phygital’ Spaces as the Fertile Garden of Third Life
  Kwangsuk Lee(Associate Professor of Graduate School of Public Policy and Information Technology at Seoul National University of Science and Technology)

• Art in Third Life: ‘Artificial Actuality(artefactualité)’ and ‘Actual Virtuality(actuvirtualité)’
  Wonjoon Yoo(Assistant Professor of School of Fine Arts, Transart department of Yeungnam University)

• Art Education in the era of Third Life
  Chungyean Cho(Director of Center for Art Convergence, Professor of School of Film, TV & Multimedia, K-Arts)