Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 12:47:16 -0700
From: Oliver Frommel <oliver@AEC.at>
Subject: CFP: Ars Electronica 1996
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds

From: Oliver Frommel <oliver@AEC.at>


| | _______  |   Ars Electronica 1996
| | | ___  | |   "Memesis - The Future Of Evolution"
| |_| |  |_| |   September 2 - 7, 1996
|_____| |____|
______  ______   Prix Ars Electronica 1996
____  | | ____   Deadline April 30, 1996
______| |_____


Calling all Friends of Ars Electronica!

This year's Ars Electronica Festival has - among other things - new
dates.  The theme of the 1996 Festival, which runs from 2nd - 7th
September in Linz, is "Memesis - the Future of Evolution". Symposia,
exhibitions, concerts, events and a wealth of art projects will
illuminate the fast-approaching moment in "digital evolution".
"Memesis" is concerned with "interactivity" as a key cultural
technique, and adresses the question of the evolutionary "fitness" of
"memes" - that is, the cognitive behavioural patterns which are
propagated via communication, and which find what amounts to an ideal
environment in the electronic media.

The 1996 Festival week - which in future will always be in autumn -
coincides with the opening week of the Ars Electronica Center, which
opens its doors on 2 September 1996. The Ars Electronica Center is now
co-organiser together with the Upper Austrian Regional Studio of the
ORF- (Austrian Broadcasting Corporation) - of the Ars Electronica
Festival.  Both the Ars Electronica Center and the Festival are under
new management, with artistic responsibility vested in media artist
Gerfried Stocker as the new Managing Director of the Center. Together
with Christine Schopf of the ORF, Gerfried Stocker is also responsible
for substance and conception of the Ars Electronica Festival.

As in previous years, the Prix Ars Electronica, which was first
organised in 1987 by the Upper Austrian Regional Studio of the ORF,
will again be one of the pillars of the Festival. In fact in 1996 it
is to be accorded even greater prominence in the Festival. The Prix
Ars Electronica, which this year is funded with a total of approx. US$
122,600, provides a forum for both the status quo and future
developments in what the Festival addresses as "digital evolution".

If you would like to receive entry forms for the international competition
of computer arts, the Prix Ars Electronica, please contact us under the
following numbers:


phone: + 43-732-6900-267
fax:   + 43-732-712121-2
e-mail:  info@aec.at


