ARS ELECTRONICA 2006
Linz from 31 August to 5 September.


With the title of Make it simple this year’s electrolobby takes a look into the myth of electronic nomadism. Here we depict shortly the contemporary new-media creators’ reality and how it is represented at the electrolobby.

Whether as laptop performer, software artist, web-designer, or network administrator, we assist to the realm of the Digital Tuareg. With laptop computers as Tagelmusts (the tuareg's veil), these nomads master the craft of digital creativity. Following the path of open self education these wanderers have found tools to resist the omnipresence of media conglomerates and created an intellectual niche in nowadays digital lifestyles.

Easier forms of software have helped many to get introduced to the complex desert of bits. Tools like Processing, PureData, and their close-source equivalents have made possible for many to learn collaboratively and share knowledge in their communities of practice.

On the other hand, we assist to the birth of Open Hardware, a new category of tools thought mainly for lighting up the somehow obscure world of hardware. Unlike software this media has a physical entity, and also a completely different set of assets, licensing strategies, and production means. The electronic nomads have now available a whole range of alternative ways of riding their laptops, interfacing them with new types of sensor technologies.

The electrolobby offers an interlaced program of workshops, minishops, talks, company-visits, interactive works, and performances, all of them spiced in indigo turbans and with the openness of a community of creators willing to expand.


D. Cuartielles, curator