CERN inspires 2011 edition of the ARS Electronica Digital Arts Festival

This year’s annual ARS Electronica Digital Arts Festival featured CERN as the springboard for its theme, ORIGIN – How it All Begins. The prestigious digital arts festival also served as the perfect venue to launch the Collide@CERN project.

Colours and Lights at the ARS Electronica Digital Arts Festival in Linz (Austria). (Photo by Claudia Marcelloni)

The CERN cultural policy project, announced at the beginning of 2011 has started to gain momentum. Ariane Koek, art specialist for the Communication Group, received confirmation in May that ARS Electronica had chosen her proposal to use CERN as the primary source of inspiration for their annual ARS Electronica Festival. This marks the first of the cultural policy’s arts partnerships.

The world-renowned celebration for the digital arts is held annually in Linz, Austria, where, amongst the incredible collection of displays and productions, the Prix ARS Electronica – the Oscars of the digital arts world - are presented During this year’s festival (31 August - 6 September), Koek had the opportunity to announce and open the competition for an additional Prix Electronica: the Collide@CERN Artist in Residency Digital Arts Award. “ARS and CERN have both conducted extensive external fundraising in order to create and support the digital award,” says Koek. “We’ve worked very closely and I am excited to see what we can create together.”

The Collide@CERN project has also recently received funding for a dance and performance award, which will not be announced until November. “Now with the funding for a dance and performance award from the City and Canton of Geneva, which will open later this year, the festival will be a fantastic international launch for the Collide@CERN project.”

(Photo by Claudia Marcelloni)

An artist winning the Collide@CERN award will be granted a residency of up to three months with the opportunity to integrate into the CERN community and truly become a resident. “Integration is part of the criteria for the prize – along with excellence in the arts, the artists must be interested in integrating and communicating,” says Koek. A free and open exchange between the artist and the scientists and engineers at CERN is what Koek envisions. “The artist will be paired up with a science mentor who is appropriate for what the artist hopes to accomplish, and together they will give two lectures: the first at the beginning to explain what they do and what they plan to do over the course of the residency, and the second at the end, when the artist will return with his or her final work.”

In addition to the residency at CERN, ARS Electronica has committed to offering the digital arts award winner a creative space in Linz for a month to produce his or her work. “The digital artists will research and plan their work at CERN, but the physical work will be created with an ARS mentor back in Linz, at FutureLab,” explains Koek (see box).

The CERN-inspired festival also saw the participation of Rolf Heuer, Director General and Sergio Bertolucci, Director of Research and Computing, who led a two-day symposium on Friday 2 and Saturday 3, September about the physics at CERN. Ariane Koek also featured in the symposium, where she led a session on the art of physics on Saturday 3 September and explained the Collide@CERN Artists in Residency programme in detail.

by Jordan Juras