WIRED Staff
Culture

Slideshow: City Survives Art Geek Invasion

This year's Ars Electronica festival turned the city of Linz, Austria, into one big digital art installation, featuring everything from car alarms programmed with laugh tracks to messages broadcast by antelope horn. By Michelle Delio.
Image may contain Airport Human Person Terminal and Airport Terminal
Tablet PC touch screens allow festival visitors (and locals) to leave behind hand-written notes and doodles. Posted photos, taken earlier, can be enhanced with scribbles. The result is a colorful info-collage that is constantly changing.Concept: Horst Hörtner; Realization: Christian Naglhofer, Roland Haring, Erwin Reitböck, Christopher Lindinger.

See related story: City Survives Art Geek Invasion

Image may contain Human Person Banister and Handrail
Ars' "Language of Networks" conference explored the theory and practical applications of network-analysis tools in various scientific fields, art and art theory, as well as in the economy and the business world. The conference drew 30 representatives from seven countries and a wide variety of scholarly disciplines.
Image may contain Human Person Tripod Studio and Face
For this project on display at Ars, six young American actresses were asked to smile prettily for the camera -- some for over an hour. A computer running pattern-recognition software observed them going about it. Whenever there was no genuine emotion behind the smile or the actresses were distracted, the computer chided them by setting off a shrieking alarm.
Image may contain Human and Person
On display at Ars Elelctronica was work created at IAMAS, a renowned educational institution in Ogaki, Japan, that integrates art and science. IAMAS art students learn network design, computer animation, interface design and interactive media design as well as work with traditional media.
Image may contain Human Person Dance and Acrobatic

Isadora -- Future of Memory Improvisation

by Marc Coniglio and Dawn Stopiello is a perfomance piece that explores how memories are created, stored, romanticized, repressed and lost.
Image may contain Electronics Computer Pc Human Person Laptop Keyboard Computer Keyboard and Computer Hardware
Is this the future of human-computer interfaces? Let's hope not, or we'll all look awfully silly. Here, an exhibit shows how brain-computer interface beanies can transform brain waves into command signals to control a computer.
Image may contain Water Swimming Human Sport Sports Person Outdoors and Nature

Iso-Phone

by James Auger, Jimmy Loizeau and Stefan Agamanolis lets users really immerse themseleves in their conversations. The user swims in a floating tank and wears a helmet that eliminates any input from the outside world, so that the user's undivided attention is focused on the vocal connection of a telephone conversation. Remember what it was like to chat in private instead of while walking down a busy street?
Trace Encounters

Trace Encounters

, 1,000 festival visitors were given an RFID-outfitted pin to wear. The microchip in the pin recorded the number of contacts each individual had with others sporting the pins, as well as when the contact took place and its duration. Project by Jefferson Y. Han, Peter K. Kennard and W. Bradford Paley.
Image may contain Human Person Clothing Apparel Potted Plant Vase Plant Pottery Jar and Pants
In this project by Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau, the growth of artificial plants is controlled by a user touching living plants. The movement of the user's hand approaching the plants is transformed into numeric data that are transmitted directly to the growth program.
Image may contain Human Person Clothing Apparel and Coat

Commotion

, by Bram Dauw and Alexandre Arman, participants wear helmets that vibrate when the car is moving. The vibration increases as the car careens off the racetrack and heads toward what must be certain destruction.