Ars Electronica Festival is the media art festival in the world and celebrated its 40th anniversary this year (photo credit. Stefan Fuertbauer/Getty Images for Hyundai).
If scientific technology and art, the two very unrelated areas come together, what would happen? Ars Electronica Festival’ began in 1979, Linz, Austria, and for 40 years has been doing experiments about this very question. This festival brings in more than 100,000 people each year; it’s a place where global enterprises including Hyundai Motor Company introduce technologies that inspire humanity with artistic inspiration.
During the festival, the four industries of technology, science, research, and art continue interchange and produce never before seen, original works. Hyundai Motor Company was the official sponsor for this historic festival which celebrated its 40th anniversary this year. Let’s take a look at the festival where technology becomes art and art becomes technology.
Crisis of future technology, concerns about co-existence
Hyundai Motor Company supported Ars Electronica Festival, where technology becomes art (photo credit. Stefan Fuertbauer/Getty Images for Hyundai).
From September 5th to 9th, the Ars Electronica Center in Linz, Austria, was the ’future exhibition center’. More than 1,000 experts including artists, curators, engineers, scientists, futurists and startup CEOs from more than 100 countries around the world gathered together. Conferences, forums, exhibitions and shows took place under the theme ‘Out of the Box: The Midlife Crisis of the Digital Revolution.’
Nexo and other environment friendly vehicles acted as a bridge between various fields (photo credit. Stefan Fuertbauer/Getty Images for Hyundai).
Since the development of technology, one cannot disregard ‘environment pollution’ among crises the modern population faces. Hyundai Motor Company sponsored environment friendly vehicles as the Official Mobility Partner of the festival and as a participating global brand. 9 vehicles in total from Hyundai Motor Company including the hydrogen electronic car ‘Nexo’ and ‘IONIQ electric’ were selected as the festival’s official ceremony car. They acted as a bridge between the experts in various fields during the event period. It was also the chance for the brand to show its value and technologies to the experts from many countries and participate in the discussion about future environment.
Hyundai x ART, future mobility meets media art!
Videos about different art activities that realize the Hyundai Motor Company brand value were shown (photo credit. Stefan Fuertbauer/Getty Images for Hyundai).
At the festival, there was also a special exhibition about art, technology and future society from the Hyundai Motor Company’s perspective. At the exhibition booth installed with the theme ‘Hyundai x ART’, one could come across various activities that fused art and technology together. Here are some attempts that tried to realize the brand’s potential values through creative media art.
1 Technology, art and the audience come together, VH AWARD
Artist Seo Dong-joo’s ‘A Thousand Horizons’ won the VH AWARD 2019 Grand Prix.
Hyundai Motor Company has always been interested in ‘media art’, where video technology becomes art. VH AWARD, which was established in 2017, is something that expanded from such interest. Back then the Korean media art platform was very limited and harsh. The AWARD was established to sponsor the media art genre and young artists. Artists were assured of liberating creative activities and were given opportunities to show the public of him/herself as well as his/her works. The public were also given a chance to come across a new art genre they haven’t seen before.
Artist Seo Dong-joo was also at the ‘Hyundai x ART’ in person (photo credit. Stefan Fuertbauer/Getty Images for Hyundai).
Artist Seo Dong-joo’s ‘A Thousand Horizons’, which won the 2019 Grand Prix, was at the Ars Electronica Festival’s ‘Hyundai x ART’ exhibition. This work is in itself an original fusion of technology and art. The action of flipping through pages of the book repeatedly was realized through motion graphic and high-resolution digital photography technology. The sound and image that takes place when you flip pages were shot in parts in this media art, where ‘horizon’ was metaphorically expressed. It spoke to and touched many people.
▶ VH AWARD 2019 Grand Prix-winning Work, Artist Seo Dong-joo’s ‘A Thousand Horizons’
2 A new concept of creative network, open innovation platform ZER01NE
You can experience 'Wilson & OS' yourself here (photo credit. Stefan Fuertbauer/Getty Images for Hyundai).
Hyundai Motor Company also pays great attention to activating the domestic creative ecosystem itself. Its most representative activity would be the innovative network platform ZER01NE. Artists and startups communicate and create an environment they can collaborate in together. Through this, creators can induce creative results, where drawing a line between technology and art is not important. It also has to do with the meaning of Ars Electronica Festival. This year’s festival introduced ‘Wilson & OS’, which was produced under the joint support from ZER01NE and Hyundai Motor Studio.
▶ Go to zer01ne
3 Future technology expressed through art, exhibition
The exhibition video jointly produced with Ars Electronica Festival was also shown.
The sketch video for exhibition, which was released in Hyundai Motor Studio Beijing, Seoul and Moscow at the same time last year, was also shown at the festival. This was an exhibition jointly produced with Ars Electronica Festival; it focused on the changes people will go through due to technological development and a relation between culture and technology.
The exhibition contains the images of the future society which were directed by curators with different cultural background.
It was an exhibition that displayed the future society imagined by 3 curators who come from different cultural background, including Ars Electronica Festival director Martin Honzik. Many spectators were hooked on this exhibition through its works fused with the latest digital technologies such as virtual reality, artificial intelligence, 3D printer and biotechnology.
4 Expanding into a bigger world, Hyundai Blue Prize awards
New curators discovered through Hyundai Blue Prize are leading the change in China’s cultural, art world.
We cannot not talk about ‘Hyundai Blue Prize’ when discussing collaboration with global artists sponsored by Hyundai Motor Company, which contributes to global art development through discovery of up and coming curators. Just like VH AWARD, the awards begun in 2017. It started with Hyundai Motor Studio’s opening in Beijing, where the future and present of mobility were shown together.
Since then, Hyundai Motor Studio Beijing has been planning and supporting culture and art fusion exhibitions in the China’s Beijing 798 Art District. It can be said that this place is a site for artists from various fields including design and mobility, etc., and audiences to communicate. We once again confirmed how the new curators were expanding the Chinese culture and art world at the ‘Hyundai x ART.’
‘ART + TECHNOLOGY’ series, collaboration with Bloomberg to let people know about the artists’ philosophy
Art + Technology’ video, launched with the global media group Bloomberg, was also shown (photo credit. Stefan Fuertbauer/Getty Images for Hyundai).
This exhibition showed how much Hyundai Motor Company has been continuously sponsoring modern art. Hyundai Motor Company actually has strong partnerships that go on for more than a decade with many renowned modern art galleries including LACMA in U.S. and Tate in England. There has also been a challenge which opened doors to culture and art sponsorship; it’s the collaboration work with the global media group Bloomberg.
‘Art + Technology’, a program jointly launched with Bloomberg, was also submitted to ‘Hyundai x ART. This video series is in two part and is about interviewing international artists who are creating a whole new world of their own through art and scientific technology. It was a chance to open up in-depth discussion about philosophy and artwork and the fusion of art and science.
It was a chance to get a glimpse of how technology would change art and life (photo credit. Stefan Fuertbauer/Getty Images for Hyundai).
How would technology change human life as a whole, including art as part of it? This would be the question all contemporaries living in the post digital revolution era would have to answer. Ars Electronica Festival was a chance to witness various attempts made by experts around the world.
Hyundai Motor Company also got a chance to share the achievements so far, after starting out from mobility technology and encompassing art. Not only Hyundai Motor Company was able to promote its brand image, but it also had the valuable chance to show the future it imagines. What role would Hyundai Motor Company take on based on technology and art as humanity moves forward to the innovative future? Please look forward to its next challenges.
