i wanted to surprise nina, and drag her to the ars electronica festival 2013, which, of course, took place in linz. unfortunately she already guessed what i was up to when we got on the train to linz today in the morning. to nina it was the first time ever being at the ars electronica festival, for me it was the first time ever i actually spent money to get a festival pass. weird. so we started our festival tour at the ars electronica center, aka AEC[001-054], went through all the floors, were fascinated by all the hands of the "mobility"[002] installation, saw the "geminoid hi-4"[005-006], who was already part of the last few festivals. just as creepy"telenoid"[007], or cute little "paro"[008] the fluffy seal. "the limitations of logic and the absence of absolute certainty"[009-012] was also rather impressive, not only because of the long name for this installation. another interesting thing was the "wall"[013]. but for me, the best thing was the cat tail[015-021] ("silifulin") and the cat ears[022-025] ("nekomimi"), for we all have a little nekomimi fetish. right? what? no, it's not just me - cannot be... then we were invited to build something for a cardboard city. since there already were loads of skyscrapers, we decided to give this city a huge tree[026-041], with a few little creature in the branches. once done with our diligent handicraft, we went on and found "your cosmos"[042-043]. nina was especially fascinated by this installation and enjoyed creating sounds, lights, and patterns. "the listener"[051-052] was a cute little creature that actually was also quite creepy. while i examined the realism of the textures involved, nina found it rather revolting. actually h.r. giger was this year's featured artist, but sadly he was only at the festival on thursday (owing to illness i was told). ownoez, i would have loved to see him. also the "deep space" program showing giger's art was only at 10:00 o'clock. so we decided to leave the AEC and walk on to the "offenes kulturhaus", aka OK. at the OK[055-122] the "hoehenrausch 3"[058-096] exhibition was bringing us over the rooftops of linz again. this year they had built a wooden tower[058-080,088-089] one could climb and enjoy the view over the city. following the walking path we soon lost the right walking directions inside the OK/ursulinenhof, and i think we ended somewhere that was not part of the hoehenrausch exhibition anymore. but since we had a festival pass, it did not matter anyway. we blamed the lack of signs, and were a bit confused as where to go next. so we found the attic of the ursulinen church again (we found no signs for that either, but knew where the entrance was), where the "ahora"[099-100] installation was located. "pancreas"[101] was also a strange project, just as "angles mirror"[102-103]. back in the OK we both enjoyed "the blind robot"[105-118], and "down with wrestlers with systems and mental nonadapters!"[119-121] afterwards. again an installation with a very long name, which seems trendy these days. but this one even had an exclamation mark in the name. bonus. here others did the shouting and running, which was all part of the interaction with the installation. was fun watching and listening. next stop was the old tobacco factory, aka "austria tabak werke", ATW[123-141] in short. there we spent a long time at the "retro/per/spektiven"[126-140]. old hardware, old games, old memories[126-128,135,138] of stuff we used to play with as kids. wonderful. also this area was partially organised by my friend jake, and the FH hagenberg. they did an excellent job here. puh, what an exhausting day so far. although we really got to see a lot, we actually have not the slightest clue of how much we have really covered today. how much left was there to see at the OK, the ATW, and all the other places that were participating in the festival which we did not go too? no idea at all. one day is definitely too short. still, i got the impression it was less exhibits and fewer people this year. or maybe it's because the locations are spread all over the city center. anyhow, it was fun seeing the festival activities again. also parov stellar would have been in charge of the "klangwolke" this year, but we did not take part in that. for one, we were way too tired, and also we did not know it was a parov stellar thing. we found out when it was already close to being done. nina was pretty sad, since she likes the art of parov stellar.