Ars Electronica Center — Attraction in Linz

TL;DR: Hopefully it is only the decline before a renovation or a big new exhibition. Because in the current state it's like visiting a museum of "what could have been" and not about technology.

I visit ars electronica every time I'm in the vicinity and can spare the time. This marks my 5. or 6. visit as an adult (with many more as a child) and I'm not sure if it's me getting older or the exhibition really starts wearing out.

Everything beside the traveling exhibition is worn down, GeoCity which I never had quite the time to explore, broke down three times while I was there. On the same level the "unerasable message" machine did nothing without indication if it should work or not. Some of the machines about net security seemed to be misused as surf stations.

The exhibition in the second sub floor about humans and robots was reduced to only the stations along the side walls (encircling the maker and bio lab). I like that they removed the creepy robot baby. My significant other enjoyed paro (the therapeutic robot baby seal) just as I thought she would.

It's nice that they have headphones on each display that lets you listen to something about the display but often I could not bring myself to put them on - they feel disgusting and often miss one of the ear pads. Just give me a plain socket I can put my own headphones in, because this must be a safety and health hazard, especially for the younger visitors. Sell ars branded headphones with a proprietary jack in a fancy vending machine for 10 bucks - i don't care. Just fix this!

I'm not sure if you have to work yourself up from the bottom floor when you become staff at ars electronica but it sure feels that way. While on the two upper floors the staff I met was eager and willing to describe, explain and show off anything on display. This mitigated the fact that many of the displays were sadly broken.

Ars electronica is one of the most inviting museums towards children (my own interest and fascination with science started here) that I know, second only to the technical museum in vienna. Sadly it seems that the staff is no longer trained or encouraged to ask children to behave and instead to join them when they explain how your eye or a satellite works.

This is understandably In our current time but it is sad, and you see the staff move away from groups of children as they wreak havoc in the experimentation area while the parents are nowhere to be seen.

If you are a parent, please engage in your obligation in teaching your kid proper behaviour in a museum and try to get some of the staff to explain them the displays. I'm pretty sure they enjoy it as much as you and your children will.

The last thing we visited before driving home was the 8k 3D Room, it was amazing as ever but you need to have luck with the lecturer. They switched from a movie to an interactive app which made the show more boring. Maybe it's just that 3D and VR is so much more common place today. Here a quick tip: Sit on the floor in the middle...

I have no idea what I just experienced, but calling this a “museum” is generous. It’s more like wandering through a half-broken tech showroom curated by someone who’s never left a PowerPoint presentation. I expected something futuristic and mind-expanding—instead, I got glitchy screens, walls of text dumps, and interactive exhibits that were either dead or made me wish they were.

Half the exhibits didn’t work, and the ones that did felt like a school project gone wrong. I even asked the staff to explain a few things—which only made it worse, because it turned out I had understood them. They were just that pointless. Spoiler: Sorry but the sleeping area? where the grand idea seems to be that humanity should just sleep 24 hours a day to save the planet. Capitalism is bad, rest is resistance, and to tell you this point… you lie on a deck chair and listen to soothing bedtime stories through a headset supposedly designed to extend your sleep cycle. That’s it. Could be literally just a sign and graphs.

Oh, and that greenhouse exhibit from the promo photo that looked promising? You breathe throught paper mask and feel absolutely nothing. Might as well breathe in a botanical garden—it’s the same, and at least that only costs 4 euros.

I hope there’s some hidden feature behind the locked doors—like the mysterious 8D cinema I didn’t get to see (I wasted too much time wandering through the main exhibition). Maybe that could’ve saved the experience. But everything else on display? Total disappointment.

The highlight? Learning (again) that plants are intelligent. That’s it. That’s the whole takeaway.

Summary: Save yourself the trip—and your time. They could’ve just made a website, uploaded some videos, and called it a day. If you really must to vidit a give it a try, go to some of their events first,...

Linz is a respectively small but nice city. Ars Electronica is one of the places one must visit before leaving Linz.

This museum-like place is dedicated to science and technology. When I was there, there was an activity over Virtual Reality but this activity was closed to external visitors. Ars Electronica is located on the borders of Tuna river. The main focus of the museum is VR, new information technologies and applications merging biology, chemistry, math and computing. First time in my life, I had the change to get my 3D scan in color. There was a system installed there and you stand in the middle of the system and you stand still for about 30 seconds. During these 30 seconds, the system seems to capture 2D images in color in visible light and reconstruct 3D image of you. Then, if you have a large 3D printer, maybe you can print a statue of yourself…funny…

Also, there was a place dedicated to 3D printing. You can draw some drafts there and they print them. However they print only on cartoons

There were some interesting VR stuff but most of them were not working when I was there. However, i have tried Occulus Rift and another VR system. These stuff is becoming serious.

Satellite and space…fun for kids..

It was not a very big exhibition but...