Ars Electronica Center, Ars Electronica festival and above all the Futurelab are very good examples of artists and creators as stakeholders in RRI processes. This is something that has already been discussed in this blog. In its 37 years of life, the festival core mission has been to scrutinise the main issue of how society and technology influence each other and ever since, the Ars Electronica group keeps on developing new concepts and working in new processes to achieve this.

Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) is an attempt to reconcile economic interests with the need to become a more sustainable society and the imperative to protect people from avoidable hardships (through jobs, medical support, etc.). Providing solutions to ethical challenges is thus high on the agenda of RRI.

The first step to solve a problem is to acknowledge that it actually exists, rather than to ignore it or talk it away. In a second step the problem needs to be characterised, and increasingly, described by a number of different points of view, currently done through various so-called participative processes that include not only scientists or businessmen but also e.g. consumers, farmers, or other related stakeholders. In an ideal world, the third and last step has all these different views considered when trying to find a solution that is OK for most or everybody.

We do not often see artists and creators mentioned as stakeholders considered in an RRI process. Yet the Ars Electronica Festival that took place 8-12 September 2016 in Linz, Austria, offers a convincing statement for their role in the innovation process. The Ars Electronica Festival for Art, Technology, and Society, is 80,000 m2 of space for conferences and speeches, exhibitions and projects, concerts and performances, animated films and awards ceremonies, guided tours and workshops. 85,000 visits and 534 events on five days, 842 participating artists and scientists from 50 countries.

Here are just a few images to demonstrate powerful connections between art and science. For more, have a look here and there .

 
Courtesy of Local Androids and Anouk Wipprecht