Ars Electronica 2010: Sidetrack or Crossroads?

Abstract

After the Ars Electronica 2010 festival was over, the press office triumphantly touted in its communique: “90,227 visitors at the greatest Ars Electronica Festival since 1979.” For someone who has visited the festival every year since 1989 (with only two exceptions), it is easy to simply reverse the statement, and claim that this was the poorest – or to put it more nicely: the most mediocre – Ars Electronica of the past twenty years.