The Media Lab has three exhibitions of research projects featured at the Ars Electronica Festival 2018. The theme of this year’s event is ERROR: The Art of Imperfection, a celebration of mistakes, deviations, and inventive tangents. The Lab’s exhibitions offer different takes and perspectives on this theme: exploring new frontiers, imagining new forms of expression, and experimenting with new interfaces between the physical, metaphysical, and digital.

The Ars Electronica Festival runs from September 6-10, 2018 in Linz, Austria.

Cocoon

This exhibition from the Fluid Interfaces group explores methods of interfacing with the sleeping mind. The researchers will present live experiments of three ongoing research projects that feature custom-built wearable electronics for studying sleep science across different levels of consciousness: Masca, Essence, and Dormio.

A Glitch in the Stars

The Space Exploration Initiative presents six projects from its first zero gravity research flight. Combining aesthetics, invention, and design, these projects imagine the human experience beyond the earthbound, beyond the technical and biological needs of survival.

Radical Atoms

The Tangible Media group’s Radical Atoms exhibit premiered at Ars Electronica 2017, and has been extended through 2019 by popular demand. Featuring 12 of the group’s classic and latest projects, Radical Atoms combines neuroscience and biotechnology, robotics, hardware, and software to bring the digital and physical together in new and surprising ways.