As Far As I Can Tell

The Ars Electronica 2004 festival starts next week in Linz, Austria. This is one of the many conferences I’d love to attend but am foiled by either price or location. The theme this year is TIMESHIFT—The World in 25 Years, in reaction to this being the 25th year of the festival.

I�m not sure if it�s new or not, but I�ve recently discovered their festival catalog archive with nearly complete full text versions of their 23 catalogs. This is an amazing resource to offer on the internet and one that many institutions would sell only in printed form. With this archive Ars Electronica extends the purpose of their gatherings by continuing the discussion, and doing it in the digital form. It�s exactly what you’d expect from their mission statement, but still a happy surprise.