The Red Bulletin Innovator Styria EN

Ideas for a better future

2022 EDITION INTERNATIONAL

We’re going green Styrian ideas for the world

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EDITORIAL

I N N O V AT O R

WELCOME TO STYRIA

Green wins!

CONTRIBUTORS

Karin Cerny

VICTORIA SCHAFFER, MIRIAM JOANNA

BIRGIT BENDA (COVER), BIRGIT BENDA

is an extremely versatile author who contributed multiple articles to this edition of INNOVATOR. We’d particularly like to note the passionate ice swimmer’s potpourri of food and drink innovations, where there’s something for every taste. Bon appétit!

FROM PAGE 80

Styria is often called the ‘green heart of Austria’. This is neither a pipe dream nor marketing jargon – it’s simply the truth. And it has been for centuries. This is partly because over 61 percent of the second largest of Austria’s nine states is carpeted in forest, which is also why the colour green is a key feature on Styria’s coat of arms.

However, green also represents 21st century Styria. The place where, as the state anthem says, the charcoal’s glow and the hammer’s blow of industrious strong hands once begot the iron, is now home to pioneers in environmentally friendly technology. One prime example of this is that the all-electric Jaguar I-Pace is a genuine Styrian.

We took this car for a spin around the state and were truly impressed by the abundance of green ideas that we encountered, the visions that had become realities and the strength of the Styrians who we met along the way. This edition of INNOVATOR is guaranteed to astound you! Join us as we explore the green state!

Hannes Kropik is Karin Cerny’s male counterpart, who could be described as harsh yet warm: harsh when it comes to his preferred stringed instrument sounds yet warm when it comes to poetry. Since joining our magazine team, it’s been clear to see that he’s passionate about trees.

FROM PAGE 70

INNOVATOR

In the heart of Europe Small but very green.

Styria promotes the development of innovative and environmentally friendly technologies – and consequently regards itself as the green heart of Europe.

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STYRIA

CONTENTS Bullevard 10

Click for happiness

12

You’re up little one!

The Graz start-up Instahelp offers online psychological counselling.

A mini, electric fire engine that find its way around like a bat.

A whole new can of worms And a message you’ll love to devour. We provide the proof.

16

Patented packaging

18

High-tech training hall

20

Feel rejuvenated!

Niceshop deliveries are environmentally friendly – thanks in part to special packaging.

Feature 24

22

32

The oak tree’s roots

38

The journey to a green future – a better future

Fitness-tracking tops Speed, heart rate, breathing – the QUS top measures all data needed for optimum training.

Johanna Pirker’s mission: to make life one big game!

As a student, the TU Graz professor looked for errors in computer games.

Today, she believes that gaming makes the world a better place.

The footballing paradise of Wundschuh, where ball sport meets technological progress.

A company from Graz supplies fuel for the body – in capsule form.

ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER MUSEUM, NUSSMÜLLER.ARCHITEKTEN, GIAN PAUL LOZZA

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Arnold Schwarzenegger en route to becoming a global star. Even in his younger years, he already looked great with his impressive biceps – turn to page 32.

Arnold Schwarzenegger – from a bodybuilder to a climate ambassador. A look at a man who has repeatedly reinvented himself.

Mobility, health, environment, digitalisation – 24 innovative answers to the questions of our age.

4

INNOVATOR

I N N O V AT O R

The Mayr-Melnhof head office was constructed from wood right back in 2008 – turn to page 70.

56

My avatar is going shopping

62

The man who gave our world new dimensions

Shopping made easy: your mobile phone becomes a changing room – and your digital twin tries the new looks.

The Styrian Erwin Wurm became one of the world’s most successful artists with his One Minute Sculptures.

70

80

Johanna Pirker, 33, is a games engineering lecturer at Graz University of Technology.

Guide 91

Let there be light!

96

A declaration of love

98

From Graz to Jupiter

Literally out of the woods Using innovation and sustainability to overcome the climate crisis. Giving new meaning to the old idiom.

Better taste for the world Nine pioneering food and drink ideas from Styria make nourishment an experience – and offer delectable reading.

INNOVATOR

Why Graz offers illumination, dancing and food for thought – eight not-to-be-missed events.

Dietrich Mateschitz describes what makes Styria so special for him.

Styrian technology will be used to explore the ice oceans on three moons of Jupiter.

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STYRIA FACT CHECK

Typical Styrian The figures, please!

A quick overview.

Bad Aussee

Admont Abbey library Erzberg

Schladming & Dachstein glacier

55,000 students

attend one of Styria’s nine higher education institutions, including five universities and two universities of applied sciences. This makes Styria the state with the second most higher education institutions, outnumbered only by Vienna.

Red Bull Ring

Holzwelt Murau (Murau World of Wood)

50,831

million euros

13,275 hectares

of Styrian land are used to grow pumpkins. Over 3 million litres of original Styrian pumpkin seed oil are produced every year.

1,246,576

788

call Styria their home. Of these, 291,007 people live in the state capital of Graz.

in Styria tower to over 2,000 metres.

One of these almost even achieves three-thousander status: the Dachstein at 2,995 metres.

people

61.6

mountains

BIRGIT BENDA

of gross regional product were generated by the Styrians in 2018.

percent

of Styria’s total area of 16,399 km2 is carpeted in forest.

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INNOVATOR

I N N O V AT O R

Fascinating facts Successes that make a difference Green tech

Mobility

Environmental companies have tripled their sales in the last ten years – to 5.6 billion euros.

The automotive industry is the leading exporter with a goods value of over eight billion euros. The mobility cluster ACstyria represents a network of over 300 companies in the automotive, aerospace and rail systems sectors.

Aerospace

Mariazell

Over 80 companies generate 650 million euros in the aerospace sector.

Research 5.15 percent of the gross regional product is spent on research. This is the highest rate in Austria.

Montanuniversität Leoben (University of Leoben)

Worldwide Apple route

Herberstein Animal World

ZWT

Centre for Knowledge and Technology Transfer in Medicine Ltd.

Graz Lipizzaner Stud Farm Piber

Head office Employees in Styria Employees worldwide Electrical/electronics

ams Osram AG Premstätten 1,340 / 30,000

Thermenland (spa country)

Airport

Companies that make a difference

Teufenbach 370 / 750 Intralogistics

Andritz GmbH

Knapp AG

25,000

Electrical/electronics, measurement technology

Anton Paar GmbH Graz 1,200 /

3,500

Electrical/electronics

AT&S Austria Technologie & Systemtechnik AG South Styrian wine route

IBS Austria GmbH

Metal industry, plant engineering Graz 3,300 /

Vulkanland (volcano country) Route 66

Metal industry, plant engineering

Leoben 2,000 /

13,000

Automotive

AVL List GmbH Graz 3,500 /

11,000

Hart bei Graz 3,100 / 5,300 Footwear industry

legero united Campus GmbH Feldkirchen bei Graz 280 / 2,000 Automotive

Pankl Racing Systems AG Kapfenberg 1,280 / 3,500 Automotive

Remus Voitsberg 420 / 700 Timber industry

Mayr-Melnhof Holzindustrie Leoben 560 / 2,000

INNOVATOR

7

TRUE LOVE

www.visitgraz.com

BULLEVARD

I N N O V AT O R

JOHANNES LANG, BIRGIT BENDA

STYRIAN IDEAS FOR A BETTER WORLD INNOVATOR

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STYRIA Bernadette Frech, Instahelp CEO: the qualified emotion manager knows what it means to express your feelings.

HEALTH

Click for happiness The Graz start-up Instahelp offers online psychological counselling via video, audio and text chat.

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MATO JOHANNIK

IRENE OLORODE

You start the day by posting your breakfast on Instagram and end it with a last quick check of your e-mails. In between, you do some online shopping and comment on a few things – the day has fewer hours than clicks. Although we spend a huge amount of time online, digital life not only brings joy, but also suffering. And it is precisely here, where the internet and mental health problems collide, that Instahelp comes in. People can use text chat or encrypted audio/video chat to access online psychological counselling from a pool of 200 psychologists and unburden themselves by talking or writing about their problems.

The psychologist and client flexibly arrange the consultation times, with appointments even available in the evenings and at weekends.

INNOVATOR

I N N O V AT O R “Our counselling can help to prevent burnouts.”

Bernadette Frech on the importance of her counselling platform

Instahelp was founded in 2015

by Toto Wolff, René Berger and the former sms.at creators Jürgen and Martin Pansy. CEO Bernadette Frech, 38, used an additional three-million-euro investment to upgrade the platform and expand the brand internationally to Germany, France, Switzerland and the UK. There is plenty of demand for online counselling. In Austria alone, some 1.2 million people struggle with mental health problems, many of whom never seek professional help. “Our online psychological counselling does not replace therapy but can help prevent mental illnesses or burnouts from occurring in the first place”, comments Graz-born Frech. The service receives 7,000 enquiries per month.

User ages range from 20 to 49 years, with an even gender balance.

“65 percent use video or audio chat counselling at least once; 35 percent use text chat. The chat might seem impersonal, but this has its benefits: if you can’t sleep at two o’clock in the morning, you can express your emotions precisely when you’re experiencing them. You’ll receive the psychologist’s answer the next morning. The chat also acts a bit like a diary as you can read things back, reflect on them, etc.

The fact that online services can successfully complement healthcare ones has been demonstrated by countries like Sweden where doctor’s appointments can be held via webcam”, says Frech. instahelp.me INNOVATOR

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STYRIA

LIFESAVERS

You’re up little one!

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“During operations, ideas arise about things that have never been done before.”

Christian Reisl, Managing Director

will eventually run out of air – and in the worst case scenario simply stop. This is a real no-go in emergency operations where every minute counts to save lives. As a result, Magirus has developed a unique vehicle that doesn’t need oxygen thanks to its electric engine.

What’s more, it can even find its

way around in complete darkness!

Sensors use ultrasound waves to detect their surroundings, just like a bat. A crew member can control the vehicle by using a tablet as a remote control.

Part of the Innovative Drive Line series and known as the LVF iDL (from the German ‘Luftversorgungsfahrzeug’ meaning air supply vehicle), this is the nimble younger brother of the world’s first series-ready fully electric fire engine (the HLF iDL), with which Magirus set a milestone in firefighting.

The two models look almost like toy vehicles. “They’re miniature versions of large fire engines”, says Reisl in description of the INNOVATOR

MAGIRUS LOHR

“Inventions are in our DNA”, says Christian Reisl, 52, Managing Director of the Styrian fire engine manufacturer Magirus Lohr. His statement doesn’t sound the least bit arrogant. Quite the contrary in fact: it sounds self-explanatory as you can quickly see what does and doesn’t work when extinguishing fires. “Over 50 percent of our employees are firefighters”, states Reisl, explaining the success enjoyed by the traditional business, which was founded in 1922 and has its head office in Zettling, near Graz: “During operations, ideas arise about things that could be done differently or that have never been done before. We receive direct, first-hand feedback.”

What exactly does that mean?

Firefighting in tunnels is an exceptional situation: heavy smoke development impairs visibility and makes it hard to breathe. This poses challenges for both people and machines, as even fire engines need oxygen. If used in a cloud of smoke, a classic combustion engine

KARIN CERNY

Magirus Lohr developed the world’s first electric fire engine.

Its successor can find its way around even in complete darkness – just like a bat.

I N N O V AT O R

Everything has its place in the HLF iDL fire engine: a whole range of equipment can be compactly stored in a flash.

Light, nimble and flexible: the air supply vehicle LVF iDL can even be controlled by tablet in the dark.

emergency vehicles. At just 3.45 metres long, 1.3 metres wide and 2.07 metres high, they are even smaller than the much-loved Volkswagen Type 2 – or classic VW camper as it’s more popularly known (and not just by hippies).

How’s it possible to cope with so little space? “Thanks to flexible stacking technology, only the things needed for the specific operation are loaded onto the vehicle.” Furthermore, extinguishing devices are becoming ever lighter. After all, firefighters should be able to save lives without having to lug things around unnecessarily. This is something else Magirus is successfully working on. magirus-lohr.at INNOVATOR

The electric fire engine can travel up to 110 kilometres on a single charge and reach speeds of up to 65 km/h.

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I N N O V AT O R

STYRIA

“Eating mealworms is a case of mind over matter.”

whole A new can of worms … … and an important message you’re sure to love to devour. After all, the little creepy-crawlies are set to revolutionise our meals.

If the world’s population grows to almost ten billion by 2050, we’re going to be facing some major challenges. Even today, food accounts for a quarter of our ecological footprint. And meat is by far the biggest climate killer. If we want to save our planet, we need to stop eating meat and find other sources of protein for our needs.

It’s long been known that insects are particularly rich in protein and they’re already popular snacks in Asia and South America. Now, Simon Berner, 45, futurologist and professor of sustainable food management, wants to make this the case in Europe too, stating: “Insects have huge potential to be a central piece of the puzzle as to how we can create a more sustainable world.”

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fh-joanneum.at

That actually looks pretty appetising. A few questions still need to be answered before mealworms can become snacks.

INNOVATOR

ADOBE STOCK

DIET

He is therefore researching mealworms at FH Joanneum university of applied sciences. Others have done this before him, but the difference is in the details. As the head of the ‘Sustainable Protein’ project, Berner is following a systemic approach. This means that once mealworms have been added to our diet, they should stay there forever.

Before things can get that far though, it needs to be clearly demonstrated that mealworms are a sensible long-term substitute for meat. Berner probably knows these insects better than anyone else now: he knows which food best helps them thrive and where they most like to live. His research to date has given him high expectations.

Mealworms provide high-quality protein, amino acids and fatty acids. As they are neither classed as fish nor meat, they could revolutionise our diet. And the climate at the same time. Berner breeds and processes the mealworms in Graz in cooperation with students, producing sustainable protein from Styria.

“Part of our research is about creating acceptance. Eating mealworms is a case of mind over matter.”

In view of the above, Berner’s team have also made the insects into a tomato sauce, which people are more likely to try. Berner himself most likes eating dried mealworms in their pure form. They taste slightly nutty and are particularly crispy. Simply delicious!

SABRINA LUTTENBERGER

Researcher Simon Berner likes dried mealworms best.

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I N N O V AT O R

STYRIA

Niceshops’ lovely Managing Directors: Christoph Schreiner, Barbara Unterkofler and Roland Fink (from left)

Can you shop digitally while still being green? Yes! With climate-neutral shipping and patented packaging.

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Deliveries in Graz, Vienna, Linz and Salzburg are climate neutral.

livered to the 1.3 million active customers every day – and in a certified climate-neutral manner since 2018.

While an in-house photovoltaic system produces green electricity, the neighbouring farmer’s biogas plant heats the company building in Paldau.

The products ordered are shipped in patented packaging, which can be resealed without adhesive tape, and already delivered by bike in Graz, Vienna, Linz and Salzburg. Thanks to the majority takeover of the bicycle supplier AustroConnect in February 2022, this service is now set to be rolled out in the largest cities around Europe too. niceshops.com INNOVATOR

IRENE OLORODE

Smileys for the nature

“Niceshops delivers up to 20,000 parcels per day.”

NICESHOPS GMBH

ONLINE SHOPPING

Online shopping may be convenient – but only for consumers.

Products leave warehouses in plastic packaging under great time pressures and are often transported hundreds of kilometres by lorry to quickly reach their destination.

What delights customers is a burden on our environment. Robert Fink, 47, was also aware of this and founded Niceshops in 2010, an online shopping service committed to sustainability.

He first entered the world of e-commerce back in 2006 with the online shop Vitalabo, which he and his mother-in-law used to sell food supplements. Demand grew so much within four years that Fink rented a warehouse in Feldbach and established Niceshops.

The company’s portfolio now includes over 45 shop brands, including Ecco Verde, Bloomling and Biolindo. With 550 employees, it operates over 400 international online shops, has its own e-bike brand Geero and handles logistics and customer support for start-ups.

In 2021, Niceshops generated a turnover of around 150 million euros. Up to 20,000 parcels are de-

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STYRIA “The skills.lab helps us systematically develop our players.”

Hasan Salihamidžić, sporting director of FC Bayern Munich, has trusted in Styrian footballing expertise since 2020.

FOOTBALL

A high-tech training arena In Wundschuh, to the south of Graz, football meets progress.

The interactive skills.lab has long since been in the Champions League of the technology world.

Roland Goriupp HEAD OF SPORTS

The former national team goalkeeper, 51, constantly develops new tasks.

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How hard are my shots? Can I make the perfect pass? Can I put the ball into the top corner with millimetre precision? These are all questions that footballers wonder about.

The skills.lab uses cameras, laser sensors and complex algorithms to provide objective answers – and document all improvements in performance.

There are currently around 60 exercises available. These aim to improve the quality of passing and shooting, dribbling, ball handling and speed as well as the perception of match scenarios.

“We make standardised evaluations”, explains former Bundesliga professional Roland Goriupp, Head of Sports and the man responsible

for the development of the tests.

And they do so under the most realistic conditions possible. The sound system can play the noise of fans singing or booing on demand, while the four ball machines can fire out balls (with or without curl) at up to 130 km/h.

“Our training facilities are used by professionals from Sturm Graz and Grazer AK as well as amateur, junior and recreational players”, comments Goriupp. We evaluate data and present it – in anonymised form – in relation to the results of comparable players.” Young boys and girls also find it particularly fascinating to compare their own performances with those of seasoned professionals. The data INNOVATOR

I N N O V AT O R

Match scenarios are simulated on six screens. The aim is to find the pass option (behind the player).

HANNES KROPIK

serves as a basis for managing training. “There’s a huge difference in quality between completing a high-intensity exercise in 2.0 and 2.5 seconds, but even experts find this almost impossible to see with their bare eyes.” Anton Paar SportsTec GmbH, a subsidiary of the Anton Paar Group AG, which celebrates its 100th anniversary as a specialist in high-precision laboratory instruments and process measuring systems in 2022, is behind the development of the skills.lab and its sophisticated software.

The first facility was opened in 2016 in Wundschuh to the south of Graz. There are now four more of the hexagonal, 320-square-metre arenas with artificial turf and six screens worldwide.

One of these has been on the FC Bayern Munich campus since 2020. The reigning Bundesliga champions use the system to compare players’ skills. The club’s sporting director Hasan Salihamidžić, himself a Champions League winner as a player in 2001, is full of praise: “The skills.lab helps us systematically develop our players through both customised training and performance monitoring.”

Roland Goriupp is involved in everyday league life as SK Sturm Graz II’s goalkeeping coach. He knows that matches are getting faster: “It’s not about whether you can run a kilometre an hour faster with the ball though. What matters is how quickly you can identify situations and find the right solutions.”

ANTON PAAR SPORTSTEC GMBH

skills-lab.com

Precision counts in the skills.lab arena: the more accurately the ball hits the bottom right corner of the goal, the higher the score.

INNOVATOR

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I N N O V AT O R

STYRIA

The spermidine is extracted from wheat germ in a secret procedure and offered in two forms, including as capsules.

When our body no longer produces enough fuel for the cells, spermidine capsules come to its aid.

A Graz-based company is doing pioneering work.

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INNOVATOR

MARKUS GEISLER

Fountains of youth

“Studies in South Tyrol have shown that people with a spermidine-rich diet have lived up to five years longer than others”, says Pock, pointing out that life expectancy is going to rapidly increase.

“Over the last 2,000 years, average life expectancy has doubled from almost 40 to about 80 years of age.

In the next three or four generations, it’s set to rise to nearer 100 years.”

To enjoy this extra time, the topic of longevity is becoming ever more important. Pock: “In the USA, extending the ‘healthy life span’ is right on trend. We’re continuing our research in that area on many levels too, to prevent age from becoming a threat.” spermidinelife.com

TLL THE LONGEVITY LABS GMBH

HEALTH

Living a long, healthy life is one of people’s greatest desires, and our body has many tools that enable us to do just that. One of these is its ability to produce spermidine, which stimulates autophagy, i.e. the selfdigestion of cells. “The problem is that once we reach about 35, our bodies start to produce less spermidine”, says Herbert Pock, 50, Managing Director of TLL The Longevity Labs GmbH from Graz. This results in less power and higher susceptibility to health issues.

This deficit can be offset by eating certain foods or fasting, which triggers a similar effect, but this takes a lot of effort. The good news is that the Graz-based company has become the first in the world to successfully develop a process for extracting natural spermidine from wheat germ.

Available as capsules or a drinking cure, people can take a daily dose of up to six milligrams of spermidine to stimulate their cells.

A powerhouse for healthy cells – also effective as a drinking cure.

Would you like to take some time off? In Steiermark, people consciously make time for the important things: their produce is in harmony with nature and they prepare it with a lot of dedication and love. And that, you can taste from glacier to wine.

© Steiermark Tourismus | Tom Lamm

www.steiermark.com

Tastes good and feels good!

STYRIA

SP ORT

Fitness­ tracking tops Speed, heart rate, breathing – the QUS top measures all key data that athletes need to optimise their training.

The 36-year-old former professional footballer played for teams including Austria Vienna, Sturm Graz and FC Pune City in India.

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tion change or speed, but also vital data such as heart rate, breathing rate and heart rate variability. And it does so with impressive accuracy.

“We ask: do you just need data or really accurate data?”, says Marko Stanković, Brand Ambassador and Head of Sales at sanSirro. “We don’t extrapolate anything; we measure everything on the body. Studies have shown that abrupt movements can cause heart rate watches to be out by up to 30 beats per minute.”

All the data collected is stored in a

MARKUS GEISLER

BRAND AMBASSADOR AND HEAD OF SALES AT SANSIRRO

The well-designed back does more than just look great. The data collection chip is nestled between the shoulder blades.

SANSIRRO

Marko Stanković

It all began with a quote from Under Armour founder Kevin Plank: “It’s absurd that you know more about your car than you know about your body.” Hannes Steiner, 44, CEO of the Styrian textile company sanSirro, saw the truth in this remark and thought about the simplest yet most precise way to record all data that can be useful to people when exercising. The result is the QUS sports top, which could make chest straps, heart rate watches and conventional running apps things of the past.

The ingenious bit: the top has two integrated sensors that permanently measure all relevant data.

This not only includes GPS data such as the distance covered, eleva-

INNOVATOR

I N N O V AT O R “We ask: do you need data or accurate data?”

Marko Stanković on the all-important differentiating factor

The smartphone depicts the user’s performance – all important parameters are shown.

Ready, set, go!

For all those looking to kick-start their training: the data vest boosts dynamism.

chip that is attached to the top and sent to an app in real time. This enables people to check their performance condition while training, for example to make sure an infection won’t make them run out of steam quicker than usual. Stanković, a former professional footballer and Sky reporter, explains: “There’s a clear correlation between heart rate and breathing rate. You can instantly see if the performance data deviates from the norm.” This stops people overdoing it and prevents injuries.

“QUS is a premium technology that

“Premium technology that can be washed as normal.”

is incorporated into a t-shirt or vest, which can still be washed as normal”, says Stanković. The latter may sound trivial but it’s one of the main sticking points for competitors who try to copy the product.

The developments haven’t reached the end of the line though.

The future is set to be dominated by QUS Coach, a technology that will enable the use of artificial intelligence to develop training plans that are precisely tailored to athletes’ needs. “You enter your training status and your goal and we’ll work out how you can reasonably achieve it.”

The chip on the top transmits the collected data to a mobile phone in real time – and looks great while doing so!

sansirro.com

Marko Stankovic on a benefit that confounds competitors INNOVATOR

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STYRIA

Looking up: Johanna Pirker wears a virtual reality headset and believes that the new vistas open up new insights.

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INNOVATOR

I N N O V AT O R

G AMI N G

Life’s one big game!

As a student, she hunted for errors in computer games like ‘FIFA’ or ‘Need for Speed’ and explored virtual worlds at a legendary US university.

Today, Johanna Pirker, 33, is a games engineering lecturer at Graz University of Technology. The gaming ambassador’s mission is to understand the world through gaming.

Text Wolfgang Wieser Photos Gian Paul Lozza

Outfit Peek & Cloppenburg Kärntner Straße / lena hoschek / we bandits / peng! Shop Styling Sammy Zayed / Tatendrang H&M Karla Goldoni

INNOVATOR

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STYRIA She was three or four at the time. Johanna Pirker is no longer quite sure which.

But she remembers that she couldn’t yet read or write.

What she could do though was type the necessary commands on her father’s computer to start her favourite game: ‘Prince of Persia’, which set standards in the early 1990s with its sophisticated graphics.

“I was always the prince, never the princess.”

T

oday, she’s 33, plays keyboard in the Graz indie band Coinflip Cutie, learns a new sport every year (most recently road cycling) and likes London, the books of psychiatrist Viktor Frankl and ‘Nothing Else Matters’ by Metallica.

And yes, she’s still gaming. You could say due to her job.

Dr Johanna Pirker is a lecturer in games engineering at Graz University of Technology (TU Graz). For one specific reason: she believes that gaming makes us better people.

That may sound surprising at first.

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However, Johanna Pirker explains her reasoning well. “I believe”, she says, “that games teach us empathy”, i.e. the ability to understand feelings. “I see the world through different eyes and can constantly review my decisions.

Because I can replay every situation several times. And I can’t just show people the things in my head; I can let them directly experience them – all my dreams, all my ideas.” the red bulletin innovator: Aren’t we trying to disconnect from the real world? johanna pirker: In some cases, yes. But many studies have shown us that gamers know the difference between reality and non-reality. It’s like watching a good film. Gaming transports me to a fictional world but when I stop, I return to the real world again. The games I’m taking about also convey experiences.

They tell stories that help me gain a better understanding of myself. In other words: gaming enables us to try things out without worrying about genuine consequences. We can certainly still learn from the experiences though.

Are we going to enter a virtual world – I mean with a digital breakfast, good morning kiss and run through the city?

I N N O V AT O R

Johanna Pirker – a young scientist with a firm grasp on reality, even if this photo evokes associations with Star-Wars-like space adventures.

“I can’t just show people the things in my head; I can let them directly experience them.”

STYRIA

This ‘Ready Player One’ scenario described by Ernest Cline in his global best seller, i.e. the escape from the desolation of reality into the joy of a virtual world: no, I can’t see that.

So why do we build these virtual worlds for ourselves?

I think because we’ve always been fascinated by exploring the unknown. We can travel back in time or walk around on Mars – and learn through our experiences.

Is that what you like about computer games, that they create worlds that other people can visit too?

I like to think that I can really make an impact with computer games.

You believe that you can drive innovations through gaming and make a real difference. Do you think that’s partly because game developers have learned to shift boundaries due to the simple need to do this in their profession?

It’s a nice thought but we also have excellent direct access to the latest technologies, of course. When I see a virtual reality headset, I ask myself what cool gaming experiences I could have with it.

But I also wonder what lessons the fields of art, culture, health and industry could learn from it.

THREE GAMES THAT JOHANNA PIRKER LOVES ‘Gorogoa’: a failure with a beautiful twist The pictures below are four of thousands of hand-drawn illustrations. They were created

by Jason Roberts for ‘Gorogoa’ – an enchanting puzzle game where a young boy meets a monster, asks the big questions of life and ultimately reflects

on them as an old man. Jason Roberts initially conceived ‘Gorogoa’ as a graphic novel but decided to give the story a new lease of life as a game after his initial concept failed. gorogoa.com

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DONTNOD ENTERTAINMENT, GOROGOA, CAUSA CREATIONS

Can even gangster games like ‘Grand Theft Auto’ (GTA) add value to our lives?

What happened to GTA during the lockdowns? It was a tragic time for art and culture. However, there were also people who considered the ways in which modern technologies can be used – to perform and express themselves.

There were actors who used GTA to try out role plays.

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I N N O V AT O R ‘Life is Strange’: travelling back in time Maxine ‘Max’ Caulfield witnesses her friend Chloe being shot in their home town. The dramatic event awakens Max’s ability to rewind time to save her friend’s life. But that’s far from the end of the story.

There are now five available episodes of the successful game. A remastered collection was released on 1 February 2022. lifeisstrange.squareenix-games.com

‘Path Out’: escaping war The Austrian production (Causa Creations) tells the autobiographical story of the Syrian refugee Abdullah Karam who fled the civil war that was raging in his country in search of a new home. Players experience INNOVATOR

what it means to escape from war. The game won several awards, including the European Youth Award. causacreations.itch.io/ path-out

J

ohanna Pirker has taught us that experiences gained through gaming can also assist us in real life. Or to put it more dramatically: a real explosion in a real laboratory can be fatal. In the virtual world, we simply return to the start armed with more knowledge.

“In the Game Lab Graz, we want to show how we can use games to create added value for society.

However, we also have a virtual ­reality laboratory that can be used to perform experiments that would otherwise be too complex, dangerous or expensive.”

Known as ‘Maroon’, this virtual laboratory has twelve rooms that people can ‘beam’ themselves into using a VR headset to perform various physical tests.

The name stems from the sense of humour and self-awareness of the IT visionary from Graz. This is because maroon is the antithesis of teal. ‘Teal’ was developed at MIT, the renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where Johanna Pirker conducted the research for her thesis and first learned about the use of simulations as a means of active learning.

Teal is a mixture of blue and green, while maroon is a kind of chestnut brown – and teal’s complementary colour. As a verb, maroon can also mean to abandon someone or leave them on their own – “and that’s a good fit for a focused experience in the virtual world”, says Johanna Pirker.

When you’re sitting opposite her, the professor seems more like an

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STEIERMARK Smile for the camera: Johanna Pirker still plays computer games – but can also have fun with the camera.

attentive student. She listens carefully, never interrupts, and when it’s her turn to answer, she does so with exuberant enthusiasm.

In doing so, she succeeds in answering questions that we haven’t even asked. The 33-year-old read them in our notes even though they were upside-down from where she was sitting.

There’s a good reason why she works at the University of Technology in her home city of Graz instead of earning her riches as a developer in the gaming industry.

Johanna Pirker is a woman on a mission: the mission to disseminate her ideas of good games from Graz to the world. She therefore prefers to teach than to work on games herself.

This is a decision based on a logical consideration: more game developers = more good games.

Games that open our eyes. Like the Austrian production ‘Path Out’, which tells the story of the young Syrian Abdullah Karam who escaped his war-torn country. Or ‘Gorogoa’, an interactive puzzle. Or ‘Life is Strange’, where ‘everyday heroes wield supernatural powers’.

Johanna Pirker addresses this opening of the eyes, this new form of perception, this understanding of feelings during talks. To this end, she has organised the ‘Game Dev Days Graz’, the largest Austrian conference for game developers, since 2016 – which is also why she’s sat opposite us right now.

“I regularly receive other job offers but simply love it here in Graz. I also firmly believe that we can achieve great things with the games industry right now. It’s become larger than the film and music industries combined. And I 30

“I regularly receive other job offers but simply love it here in Graz.” think we should get a bigger piece of this here in Austria. In terms of the University of Technology, I believe we could become a hub – an institution at the heart of these developments. And I’m delighted to help build this. That’s why I like being in Graz; because I can see the potential here and believe we can achieve great things together.” tugraz.at

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I N N O V AT O R

NEW PERSPECTIVES

Gaming trends What’s coming: games are being hijacked, gaming is merging with theatre and, thanks to various building blocks, it’s becoming ever easier for anyone to become a game designer – Johanna Pirker discusses the key trends.

1.

3.

Even in the first lockdown, many people met in simulation games like ‘Animal Crossing’ – to celebrate birthdays or weddings as cute avatars. In other words, the game was hijacked to use the virtual space in a different way.

The growing number of smaller development studios being established is resulting in brand new types of games being created. This can not only lead to great technical innovations but also to major design ones.

Games are being misused

2.

At the heart of the action, not just a spectator The broadest range of situations can be directly experienced thanks to virtual reality technologies. This is a brand new form of entertainment – I’m actually at the heart of the action, not just a spectator. As such, the games industry will merge somewhat with the film industry or the theatre scene.

Innovation through indie games

4.

Anyone can become a game designer

Games engines are making it ever easier for people to develop their own games. You can imagine them like lavishly equipped building blocks that provide the tools you need to implement new ideas – and not just for games, but in other areas too: at school or in the world of art. More and more people are becoming producers.

5.

Games as a silver bullet in the classroom In the Game Lab Graz, we want to demonstrate how we can use games and gamingrelated technologies to offer added value to society. We develop games with a purpose, for example to explain complex situations or encourage physical exercise.

Games offer a completely new form of teaching – they are empathy machines. They enable me to convey things that I’d struggle to teach people otherwise.

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STEIERMARK

GETTY IMAGES

Well matured and justifiably brimming with selfconfidence: Arnold Schwarzenegger, as we know him.

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I N N O V AT O R

S EL F-I N N OVATION

The oak tree’s roots Arnold Schwarzenegger’s unprecedented success story inspires people around the world. Whether as a body­ builder, a film star or a politician, he’s always shifted boundaries and broken records.

Now, he describes the fight against climate change as the “most important fight of my life”. We take a closer look at a man who has repeatedly reinvented himself.

Text Karen Müller-Macheck

INNOVATOR

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STYRIA

nyone who wonders when the Terminator’s green heart was actually planted in him should travel back in time to 1950’s Styria. Specifically, to Thal, a village near Graz with some nine-hundred residents, where home is a former forester’s house in Biedermeier style. The boys spend many hours and days playing in the forest around the village.

They bathe in the Thalersee lake in summer and skate on it in winter.

Before spring arrives, the ice from the lake is cut into blocks and transported to the ice cellar in the Reininghaus brewery, keeping it refreshingly cool until August.

When Arnold Schwarzenegger addresses climate conferences or other environmental protection events as a prominent speaker, motivating people to do their bit, this Styrian heart still beats quietly in the background. After all, a love of nature comes from experiencing nature. This enables deep, strong roots to grow. And when a strong, indeed the strongest man in the world, has this kind of connection, he’s no longer threatening, but protective.

Peter Urdl spent this time in Styria’s forest, meadows and water with Arnold Schwarzenegger as a boy. He was mayor of Thal for twen34

Photos from the Arnold Schwarzenegger museum in Thal – visiting relatives in Upper Styria in around 1970.

ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER MUSEUM

A

ty years, has remained in contact with his childhood friend in the USA for decades and even set up a Schwarzenegger museum in Arnie’s former home. Peter Urdl and Arnold also spent many an awe-inspiring hour together watching the outdoor training sessions of the musclemen who first ignited Arnie’s desire to become Mister Universe.

Urdl: “At the time, Graz was a real hub for weightlifters. In summer, they’d come to the meadow by the lake to train with really simple equipment.

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I N N O V AT O R

A muscleman: Arnie with a training partner by the Thalersee lake (probably 1966)

The look, the typical grin: the ten-year-old pictured in 1957 is already clearly the Arnie of his later life.

They’d attach two clamps to the trees, slot in an iron bar and do their pull-ups while we watched on in awe!”

The former local politician doesn’t just know the Arnold who was only thirteen years of age when he first claimed that he was going to win Mister Universe, go to America and become a famous film star. He also knows the one who at fourteen, helped the wheelchair user from across the street leave the house every morning for an outing.

“He helped him back in again after work too. Even back then, he had a social conscience”, knows Peter Urdl. This later became evident in multiple projects in which Schwar-

zenegger supported disadvantaged groups of society. For instance, the ‘Inner-City Games’, which aims to keep children from underprivileged backgrounds off the streets and away from drugs through afterschool activities. Or his dedicated patronage at the Special Olympics for people with intellectual disabilities, to name just a couple of examples.

This juxtaposition of strong and sensitive is a common thread that runs through Arnold Schwarzenegger’s life and is clearly reflected in the way his acting career progressed. Although he first shot to fame as the monosyllabic ‘paid muscle’ in ‘Hercules in New York’, ‘Conan the

A juxtaposition of strong and sensitive runs through Arnold Schwarzenegger’s life like a common thread.

INNOVATOR

Barbarian’, ‘Terminator’ and ‘Predator’, he truly became a film star for the whole family in the films where the rest of his personality shone through: his empathy and sense of humour. In the late 1980s, he specifically expanded his image to present his sense of self-irony with the comedies ‘Twins’ and ‘Kindergarten Cop’. The transition from hard-hitting combat machine to funny muscleman was a smash hit. Not only did it make him one of Hollywood’s highest earning actors in the early 90s, but also one of its most popular.

Since 1982, the Styrian photographer Christian Jauschowetz and ‘Krone’ editor Werner Kopacka have followed and documented the global star’s life and work. Their license to print has not only enabled them to attend film launches but also Arnie’s visits to his former home and his inauguration as governor of California. Jauschowetz can therefore testify that Schwarzenegger is not only a ‘Styrian oak’ 35

I N N O V AT O R

STYRIA

Arnie can also be relaxed and has no problem laughing at himself.

lion Solar Roofs Initiative’: a target declared in 2006 and achieved in 2019.

Schwarzenegger also retained his ties with his home country with regard to environmental protection, as indicated by the former mayor Peter Urdl. He fondly remembers frequent discussions with the governor about ideas and innovations: “We built a waste collection centre here in the village and he often asked me: ‘How do you do that in Austria?’ He showed great interest – and had a firm grasp of the topic.”

This connection between Thal and Los Angeles was also one of the

The secret to his success: “I’ve never had a plan B – never ever. Work without a safety net.

Put everything into plan A!” 36

reasons why Urdl pushed the idea of the Schwarzenegger museum in the village. “We want to show young people that even if they’re born in a small place, they can still achieve great things. You can truly go places if you’ve got ideas and visions!”

Many people have ideas, but few get as far with them as superstar Schwarzenegger.

So what’s his secret to success?

He revealed it during a live interview as a guest of the German motivational speaker Jürgen Höller: “I hate plan B.” Any thoughts and energy that you put into a Plan B are taken away from Plan A, and that weakens you.

Arnold Schwarzenegger: “I’ve never had a plan B – never ever.

Work without a safety net. Always put everything into your plan A!” Postscript: “And don’t be afraid to fail!”

GETTY IMAGES

who takes every opportunity to promote his home country, but also a man who shows continual commitment to the environment. In true Arnie-style, of course: “It’s important to him that everyone can do their bit for the environment with little detriment to themselves.

People should think positively, not stick their heads in the sand or complain.”

Schwarzenegger explained what he means by this at a speech in Cologne in September 2021, for example. The power of action, the use of new technologies and responsible consumption are the way forward.

Schwarzenegger himself has even been able to switch to electric and biogas models of his much-loved Hummer off-road SUV. And speaking of e-mobility: Schwarzenegger publicly provided Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg with a Tesla 3 when she sailed to New York for the UN climate conference in 2019 and then travelled around the US for several events. He even advertises emission-free driving as Zeus, father of the gods, with his mane of hair and lightning-bolt fingers.

Schwarzenegger can currently be seen with his co-star Salma Hayek as his goddess wife in an amusing Super Bowl advert for BMW’s new electric SUX iX. His companion Christian Jauschowetz also highlights Arnold Schwarzenegger’s green activities in his time as governor of California between 2003 and 2011: “He was a strong advocate of sustainably implementing environmental laws.”

The ‘Governator’ was ultimately able to record impressive successes in this area. For example, the ‘Mil-

schwarzenegger.com

INNOVATOR

STUDY. LOVE. STAY. Study in Graz.

Experience life.

achtzigzehn | Foto: Lex Karelly | Bezahlte Anzeige

graz.at/studieren

STYRIA

Mobility

BIRGIT BENDA

Digitalisation

The journey to a green future

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INNOVATOR

I N N O V AT O R

Environment

INNOVATOR

Health

Mobility, health, environment, digitalisation… the road to a better future throws up challenges from all sorts of areas of life.

We found twenty-four innovative solutions as we travelled through Styria.

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ENER GY

Fuelling the future with green hydrogen

e-steiermark.com

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The Almanra: a design study on ‘wood in vehicle construction’ in cooperation with Volkswagen.

READY TO RO L L

Wooden cars – anything but toys

“At the start of the 20th century, cars and airplanes were made of wood”, says Bernadette Karner from the research project WoodC.A.R. based in the town of Weiz in the eastern part of Styria.

“Then steel and plastic came onto the scene and wood was forgotten.” Wood isn’t just a wonderfully light material; it’s also sustainable.

Since 2014, the project partners have been assessing and digitally recording the various types of local wood to determine their suitability for potential new uses within the field of vehicle construction and beyond. Companies such as Volkswagen, MAN Truck & Bus and the wood pioneers of Weitzer Wood

Solutions are cooperating with scientists across all divisions to develop new manufacturing concepts for vehicles with wood-based hybrid designs.

The ‘Ardenner’ snowmobile has been fitted with a wooden chassis, making it 140 kilogrammes lighter than the steel-based version.

A wood-based side impact bar has also been developed for car doors. “We believe that our first wood-based components will be used within the next year or two”, says Karner. woodcar.eu

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HANNES KROPIK, KARIN CERNY

Goodbye steel, farewell plastic! Styrian researchers are investigating which trees can make people mobile. And are redefining vehicle construction in Weiz.

WOODC.A.R./VW/FH JOANNEUM, ADOBE STOCK

Styrian energy company Energie Steiermark is investing ten million euros in Austria’s first ‘green’ hydrogen production facility. The project will involve building a new photovoltaic system comprising 6,000 square metres of solar collectors in Gabersdorf in the district of Leibnitz, and combining it with an existing biogas plant.

The aim is to produce around 300 tonnes of green hydrogen per year as part of a comprehensive sustainability strategy.

This would enable hydrogen-powered cars to travel over 40 million kilometres, thereby eliminating up to 5,200 tonnes of CO² every year, for example.

The first major customer has already been signed up: Wolfram Bergbau und Hütten AG. Energy Steiermark has entered into a supply contract with the Wolfram producers from St. Martin im Sulmtal for 840,000 cubic metres of hydrogen (about 70 tonnes) from October 2022.

I N N O V AT O R

SHIPP I N G

A revolution on the high seas Increasing globalisation and growing levels of consumption are causing ever more traffic on the world’s seas and oceans – and not just that, but the ships are getting ever bigger. Maritime shipping volumes are projected to triple by 2050, and so too are the related emissions. However, green shipping is possible, as shown by the Graz-based research centre LEC (Large Engines Competence Center) whose HyMethShips are powered by e-fuels. Hydrogen and methanol are used as substitutes for heavy fuel oil. This makes it possible to reduce emissions by up to 97 percent. In summary: a green revolution on the high seas. lec.at

A heavily loaded container ship ploughs through the ocean. Freight carriers may be able to travel across the world emission-free in the future.

STYRIA

Made in Graz: a car that has made history – the I-Pace takes over the world.

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The I-Pace won 54 international awards in the first year after its launch. It represents the e-car’s rise to success in the premium segment.

INNOVATOR

GERALD ENZINGER

The Jaguar from Styria

A pit stop at Redwave. We visited innovative people with the Jaguar I-Pace from Graz.

PHILIPP HORAK

FUT URE PR O MISE

The journey is the destination. This well-known adage particularly applies on trips through the ‘Grüne Mark’ as the area is traditionally known – or the ‘Green Tech Valley’ as it’s ever more commonly called today.

This is because this ‘Tour de Future’, which takes you through so many different places in Styria and introduces you to innovative people committed to sustainability and future technology, gives you a truly great feeling. A sense of hope, nourished by energetic thinkers and doers who never form a sentence containing the word ‘problem’ alone, but always couple

I N N O V AT O R

The Jaguar I-Pace was voted Europe’s Car of the Year in 2019.

The joy of driving: reporter Gerald Enzinger travelled through Styria in the I-Pace.

Jaguar was Europe's first premium brand to launch an all-electric SUV. Only then did competitors from Germany and other countries follow suit.

Clear roads ahead. The automotive region of Styria is a leader in mobility research.

INNOVATOR

it with terms like ‘hope’ or ‘solution’ – and do so with the utmost conviction.

There’s also the perfect car for travelling around this region of thinkers and leaders – a car that symbolises both Styria’s automotive industry and the Green Tech Valley, as it shows that rather than being mutually exclusive, these two aspects actually complement each other perfectly.

We’re talking about the Jaguar I-Pace, a car that has made history. In its initial launch year alone, Europe’s Car of the Year 2019 won 54 international awards and soared to success in the premium segment with its electric-powered design like no other vehicle in Europe. It’s a car that represented future technology even during its development.

There are several parallels between the Jaguar brand and Styria – both are committed to the colour green, beautiful design, tradition and technology. The I-Pace is Austria’s first mass-produced electric car. It’s also the first vehicle that’s resulted in Jaguar winning the ‘Car of the Year’ title, voted on by 60 motor journalists from 23 nations.

It’s only natural that this business trip through the Jaguar’s home territory in and around Graz is great fun – in a car that makes no sound but has plenty to shout about.

The Jaguar I-Pace EV 320 has its own Austrian edition, which is specially tailored to the needs of the Austrian market and the country’s legal funding conditions. A

The electric Jaguar is produced at Magna in Graz.

This created more than 2,000 jobs.

sporty 320 PS from a battery with 90 kWh of storage capacity, which promises a range of up to 470 kilometres under ideal conditions according to the WLTP measurement.

Felix Wannemacher, Managing Director of Jaguar Land Rover in Austria, is expecting the I-Pace to double the sales figures in the car’s ‘home country’.

The car is produced by Magna Steyr in Graz, which has created more than 2,000 jobs in the region. Car manufacturing has a long tradition here and other manufacturers have been based in the area for decades too, but the I-Pace is regarded as particularly innovative; ‘ahead of its time’ even. Ingenious weight distribution in the aluminium car makes sure the 2.2 tonne Jaguar still cuts a great figure when cornering, offers impressive driving dynamics and, above all, is fantastic fun yet still safe when hitting the accelerator to overtake.That Styria will continue to perfectly combine the terms ‘car’ and ‘sustainability’ over the coming years and vehicle generations is another clear certainty. jaguar.at

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I N N O V AT O R

Sensor-assisted sorting machine for efficiently recovering recyclable materials in the recycling industry SOU ND E X P E RIE N CE

A concert hall for the home What sounds great in rehearsal rooms often sounds completely different on stage. This is a real challenge for musicians. Matthias Frank from the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz (KUG) has tackled this by developing the Augmented Practice Room, a virtual room that simulates the acoustics of chamber music rooms, concert halls and cathedrals, and adjusts them to the different conditions. This will enable artists to better attune themselves and their instruments in preparation for performances.

Xeperibus aut ped magnia sincill autessi tecerit, sin et il ipicienis re et vendiciuscim que poremquis mo et

kug.ac.at

ME D IC A L S C RE E N IN G

Detect skin cancer early

Digitalisation and research make Redwave a major player on the road to the target of zero waste.

SABRINA LUTTENBERGER, KARIN CERNY

Should I, shouldn’t I? People who notice changes to a mole always wonder whether to consult a doctor. After all, we have about a 20 percent chance of developing skin cancer at some point in life. The SkinScreener from medaia is here to help.

The suspicious mole is photographed with a smartphone and the app provides information about the potential risk.

After all, there’s one thing that there’s absolutely no doubt about: the earlier skin cancer is detected, the better the chances of recovery. skinscreener.com

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I N N O V AT O R

Silvia SchweigerFuchs is committed to a circular economy and works with her staff to make the world that bit cleaner.

R AW MATERIAL REC OV ERY

Redwave is cleaning up the planet A family business from Eggersdorf is a world leader in recycling.

PHILIPP HORAK

GERALD ENZINGER

Silvia Schweiger-Fuchs takes strength from having a job that makes the world a bit cleaner and better every day. She’s a woman with a calm, composed demeanour but who never stands still, and who likes to emphasise words like ‘we’ and is brimming with visions.

Silvia Schweiger-Fuchs is Managing Director of Redwave, a company that writes responsibility with a capital R. The innovations devised by the family business from Eggersdorf near Graz have

INNOVATOR

made it a world market leader for solutions for the recycling and mining industries.

Its scope ranges from glass treatment (e.g. in Australia and Italy) to metal recycling. In the field of metal, Redwave developed the first ever technology to make it possible to recycle materials that couldn’t previously be identified (and therefore sorted) using conventional systems.

The X-ray fluorescence technology Redwave XRF is currently the most advanced non-ferrous sorting method.

It enables metals and metal alloys to be identified, sorted and fed back into the production cycle.

This all makes Redwave a major player on the road to the target of zero waste, as has been acknowledged by the company’s receipt of the prestigious Energy Globe Award.

But for Silvia SchweigerFuchs, it’s about more than just awards; it’s about the abundance of ideas developed in her company.

She’s committed to putting ethical approaches (“like those I learned at home”) into practice as well as using holistic thinking to create a functioning circular economy. Her dream and goal: “We could reuse so much of the waste that’s currently being incinerated or put into landfill around the world. We have to make better use of these resources.”

Her prudent mind is always looking to the future.

And she quotes Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach: “Our actions today determine how the world will look tomorrow.” Schweiger-Fuchs and her staff help shape this by addressing the shortage of raw materials by rescuing them. redwave.com

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T EST DRI VE S

Part-built cars for whole tests

avl.com

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A symbolic image: machines perform lightning-fast analyses.

H EAL TH

Artificial intelligence fights cancer

Some forms of cancer go undetected for a long time. This reduces patients’ chances of recovery. A joint research project between the Medical University of Graz and Google has now been able to change this.

Previously, people had to teach the computer what characteristics to look for to detect diseases on images.

Now, the computer teaches itself – a revolution in diagnostics.

44,000 histological sections (ultra-thin layers of tissue that can be analysed under a microscope) were digitised using brand new scanning technology.

The computer used this image information to find markers that were previously unknown to the researchers.

And look: the new use of artificial intelligence has enabled the Medical University of Graz to discover a previously unknown tumour cell marker.

This makes it possible to detect cancer earlier, especially in high-risk patients, improving treatment options and naturally increasing the chances of survival. medunigraz.at

KARIN CERNY, MARKUS GEISLER

Google and the Medical University of Graz have jointly developed a revolutionary procedure for better detecting cancer.

ADOBE STOCK

The Graz company AVL List sends cars on test drives despite not yet being fully built.

This is made possible by a mix of real life and virtual reality.

It takes a long time to develop a new car. Three years can pass before the first prototype is ready. This makes it a real nightmare if things don’t go to plan on the first test drive – and the car has to be laboriously dismantled to rectify problems.

“There’s no need for the entire vehicle to be ready to put it to the test”, says Wolfgang Puntigam, Global Business Unit Manager at AVL List. “We build cars in the same way as playing a Lego game. Some parts are real, others are added virtually.”

There’s a cockpit but no chassis. An engine but no battery. The missing components are added virtually. The driver sits in the half-built car, dons a VR headset and feels like he/ she is sitting in a complete vehicle: “We can try out various different software programs, just like with a video game. If we always had to change the hardware first, this would be much more expensive.”

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I N N O V AT O R

“We explore ways to make future systems more secure.”

NETWO RK PR OTECTION

Professor, who can I trust?

When it comes to cybersecurity, i.e. security in our digital networks, Graz University of Technology (TU Graz) is a true forerunner.

HANNES KROPIK

the red bulletin innovator: Cybersecurity is a very important topic at TU Graz – why? stefan mangard: Because cybersecurity is the basic prerequisite for a functioning networked society.

Cybersecurity is based on confidentiality, availability and integrity. How can I be sure that the data I’m shown is actually trustworthy?

HELMUTLUNGHAMMER

TU Graz is a global forerunner when it comes to cybersecurity.

Here in Styria, we started researching this field 30 years ago and have constantly expanded our knowledge little by little by frequently focussing on new specialist areas.

INNOVATOR

Professor STEFAN MANGARD, 44, from Vorarlberg has worked and researched at TU Graz since 2013. Since 2019, he has been head of the Institute of Applied Information Processing and Communications (IAIK). iaik.tugraz.at

You caused a stir in 2018 when you and your team – in cooperation with international partners – discovered two serious vulnerabilities in microprocessors.

In the specific case of Meltdown/Spectre (editorial note: hardware vulnerabilities in microprocessors), we were able to show that acceleration technologies prevented processors from cleanly fulfilling their task of isolating different program parts. We’d been researching the topic for years – but our technology had to develop further before we were able to land this coup.

bilities in their systems and, in return, sponsor research projects at TU Graz.

How do tech companies react when they’re alerted to problems?

In the past, problems were often kept under wraps. Today, companies deal sensibly with the subject of ‘responsible disclosure’. We analyse the security of current systems while also working on projects with companies like Google, Amazon and Intel to explore ways to make future systems more secure. They invite us to look for vulnera-

You mentioned data networking. What dangers are posed by the Internet of Things? Does my washing machine share data about the contents of my fridge without my permission?

If your home appliances are networked, no-one should be able to gain unauthorised access to them and steal your private data. Even though this data has become a valuable asset, we mustn’t get paranoid.

How do your innovations benefit me as a lay person?

My ultimate vision is for you to no longer have to concern yourself with the topic of security. If we do our job right, you’ll eventually no longer receive warnings about phishing e-mails or instructions to immediately install a new version of some sort of software. Many of the software updates on your phone or computer simply mean that new vulnerabilities have been detected and rectified.

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C OMM UNI CATION

Styrian tech­ nology makes our phones mobile If it weren’t for Styrian expertise, you wouldn’t be able to use your smartphone. Eight of the ten largest producers in the world use components from AT&S.

People don’t talk about money and success. But it’s an open secret in the multi-billion-dollar hightech sector that almost all modern devices use printed circuit boards (PCBs) from AT&S. 48

These wafer-thin PCBs are the nervous system of digital technologies – whether in mobile phones, cars, airplanes or medical devices. Microchips and other electronic components are attached to them. As the trend towards smaller yet more powerful devices is continuing, the constant improvement of PCBs plays a key role on our journey into the future.

AT&S, short for Austria Technologie & Systemtechnik, was established in Leoben in 1987 and today employs more than 13,000 people, almost 2,000 of whom are based in Styria.

To retain its position of flagship supplier and remain ahead of the game in rela-

The quality control of state-ofthe-art PCBs is a key success factor for AT&S in Leoben.

tion to its competitors, the AT&S Group will invest 500 million euros in Leoben by 2025, including in a new research & development centre, thus creating 700 new jobs.

AT&S conducts it work and research discreetly, never officially disclosing the names of its prominent clients. However, the fact that eight of the ten largest smartphone manufacturers use components from Styria – and one of the company’s PCB plants in China, India or South Korea – is undisputed.

PCBs are the nervous system of digital technologies – whether in mobile phones, cars, airplanes or medical devices.

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AT&S, 4ACTIVESYSTEMS

HANNES KROPIK

High-end PCBs and IC substrates from AT&S meet the highest quality requirements.

And if you briefly surf on the internet – which you can also only do thanks to AT&S’s PCBs – you’ll quickly find articles about things like a partnership with Apple for the manufacture of its chic iPhones.

But it’s not just mobile phones that need PCBs; they’re also required for the infrastructure needed for data transmission. And this is what AT&S provides – as a technology leader – for example for the radio cells used to acquire the modern 5G network.

AT&S has long since been firmly focused on the future.

While the 5G network is set to be available throughout Austria by 2025, the people in Leoben have long been asking what will happen after that? According to Erich Schlaffer, AT&S project and program manager for the high frequency and high speed sector, the answer could well be ‘waveguides’: “These are hollow metal structures that conduct electromagnetic signals with virtually no losses. AT&S can directly integrate waveguides for data transmission at very high frequencies into PCBs.” ats.net

INNOVATOR

A motorcyclist who can be rammed for test purposes: he was developed by 4a.

TRANSPO RT

Smart dummies for a safe automotive future From pain comes wisdom – 4a in Traboch takes this concept literally and has developed a technology for learning from accidents.

Pioneering spirit prevails in the municipality of Traboch, home to some 1,400 people. Founded in 2002 by plastics engineer Reinhard Hafellner, a graduate of the Montanuniversität Leoben (University of Leoben), the 4a Group creates international demand in the aviation sector as well as wafer-thin membranes for mobile phone speakers.

The 4activeSystems division uses a 500-metre-long test track on the 4.5-hectare company premises to refine the technology for autonomous driving systems under optimal crash conditions.

To this end, its laboratory not only develops obstacles like deer, but also artificial pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists – as well as their own accident cars. “These ‘targets’, as we call them, are made of plastic and intelligent textiles, electronically controlled and can be used multiple times”, says Steffen Stelzer, Head of New Technologies. The clients’ specific identities are a wellkept company secret but CEO Hafellner does go so far as to reveal: “All major manufacturers buy our products.

Including those from California.”

4a.at

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P A CES E TT E RS

Optical fibres for the world Optical fibres are used to visually transmit data, thereby speeding up the internet.

Rosendahl Nextrom, a subsidiary of the Styrian Knill Group, is a globally leading supplier of optical fibre production systems. Founded in 1712, the family business from Weiz is managed in the 12th generation by brothers Christian and Georg Knill. And traditionally so, without any haste: “We think and act generationally, and put long-term future success ahead of short-term profit maximisation.” knillgruppe.com

Tyromotion’s rehab devices move people’s limbs to help restore brain function.

HEALING POWER

Treatment by robodoc The robots from Tyromotion in Graz enable stroke patients to remaster everyday life – and even have fun while doing so.

Even small wounds can have serious consequences. This occurs if a bacterial infection takes hold, preventing healing and causing complications.

Although invisible to the naked eye, the rapid tests from Qualizyme can reliably detect bacteria within 20 minutes.

Wound secretion is applied to a test strip, the colour of which then indicates if there is any risk. This technology also has the valuable side effect of greatly reducing the prophylactic administration of antibiotics.

HANNES KROPIK, MARKUS GEISLER

Rapid diagnosis

latter has a number of advantages: more repetitions are possible and the range of exercises is broader.

For example, patients can be asked to perform tasks using computer games or in virtual reality worlds. If they can’t manage them, they’re assisted by the robots. “This provides a sensible way to replace activities that are boring and sometimes very strenuous”, says Kollreider. tyromotion.com

MATHIAS KNIEPEISS

SE LF- TE S TI NG

Drinking a glass of water, turning a volume dial, cleaning the teeth – after a stroke, the biggest challenge lies in coping with the little everyday things again. This takes patient practice, iron discipline and therapeutic assistance. Tyromotion has made it its mission to optimise all of these components.

“We use external stimulation, i.e. externally guided movements of the limbs, to encourage the brain to restore the lost functions”, explains Alexander Kollreider, co-founder and CEO of the almost 100-strong company.

This can be done by a therapist – or a machine. The

qualizyme.com

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A freight train on the move: sensors trigger an alarm if the wheels get too hot.

SELF-DI AGN O SIS

Your train tells you when it needs repairing Smart technology enables locomotives and carriages to independently determine when something stops working – and sound the alarm in good time.

SIEMENS, SBBC CARGO, MOMOOD

KARIN CERNY

Everyone gets annoyed when trains break down.

Many operational disruptions could be prevented if repairs were performed before things fully fail.

To prevent breakdowns, the trains of the future will ‘think’ for themselves. Siemens Mobility, which has a plant in Graz, produces intelligent chassis that automatically detect when they need to stop.

“Sensors are attached to the train, which measure the temperature of the wheel or vibrations. This detects irregularities at an early

INNOVATOR

stage”, says Michael Braun, Siemens Group spokesperson. “A diagnostic system estimates when a failure is likely to occur.”

This gives people constant information about the trains’ health and enables them to replace faulty components in good time. “This won’t just make rail services more punctual and reliable, but will also enable companies to keep fewer trains in reserve”, says Braun.

Freight trains are also set to be modernised. As soon as a waggon is stationary for 24 hours, the brakes have to be checked. Previously, workers had to physically inspect the train and tap on the brakes. It takes two people 40 minutes to check a 500-metre-long freight train. “This is ergonomically unsound and inefficient”, says Günter Petschnig, Managing Director of PJM, a Graz-based specialist in system solutions for rail freight transport. Its WaggonTracker system will in future perform the checks automatically and send the data to the locomotive driver’s tablet.

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The WaggonTracker system sends data straight to a tablet.

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The train brakes are automatically checked using the latest technology.

mobility-siemens.com, pjm.co.at

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Cars that care “Your heart rate’s up. Do you want to take a break?” Cars know how their drivers are doing. They often register stress or exhaustion even before people do – using smart surfaces. Sensors integrated into the seats or fittings are able to respond to touch, pressure or elongation, working like an ‘intelligent skin’. Smart@ Surface was developed by Materials, Joanneum Research’s Institute for Surface Technologies and Photonics. joanneum.at/materials

INNOVATION ENGINE

The Red Bull Ring shapes the future of racing Emergencies in test tunnels Anyone who takes a closer look at the Zentrum am Berg is sure to get tunnel vision. There’s no way around it. After all, what the Montanuniversität Leoben (University of Leoben) has created on the Erzberg mountain is a research facility unlike any other in Europe. Five tunnel systems with a total length of about four kilometres enable tests to be performed under real-life conditions. This is also appreciated by emergency organisations like fire brigades, for whom the Zentrum am Berg offers training and development opportunities. Situations can even involve car fires, ready to be extinguished for teaching purposes. zab.at

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A race track with a dazzling past, powerful present and ideas for the future: how the Red Bull Ring is changing Styria and astounding the world.

Formula 1 racing cars with around 1,000 PS, rapid MotoGP motorcycles that hit speeds of up to 362 km/h and the best drivers/riders battling it out for every centimetre of the track.

Up to 210,000 spectators on a race weekend at the Red Bull Ring – and up to 108.7 million (!) viewers around the world avidly watching Formula 1 on TV. No other sport enjoys such international popularity. And a spectacular hillside location in Upper Styria has a very special place in this scene: the

Red Bull Ring. Sporting history was written here in 2020: after months of standstill due to the global pandemic, the first two top-level international sporting events took place here in July: the Austrian and Styrian Grand Prix.

The races opened the door by showing how major events could be organised during such times. They also marked a further milestone for the only race track to host the three major series Formula 1, MotoGP and DTM in a single season – a versatility

INNOVATOR

GETTY IMAGES/RED BULL CONTENT POOL, RED BULL RING

R I SK C H E C K

I N N O V AT O R Unmistakable colours: Max Verstappen’s jubilant fans

Max Verstappen is avidly cheered on at the Red Bull Ring

KARIN CERNY, GERALD ENZINGER

Erich Wolf, formerly one of Europe’s best aerobatic pilots, is committed to sustainability as Managing Director of the Red Bull Ring.

that also always characterised the Red Bull Ring’s Managing Director during his professional life: Erich Wolf was world champion in aerobatic flying and a master of the widest range of aeronautical vehicles. On solid ground though, he was always drawn to this race circuit opposite the Zeltweg Airfield.

“I worked here as a track marshal during my training as a military pilot and loved watching the racers.” Jochen Rindt and Niki Lauda became national heroes here.

He later had regular dealings with Lauda – as two men passionate about their vehicles.

The Red Bull Ring, as the world’s most modern racing circuit is now called, has become the engine of a booming region, benefiting people and companies from Murau to the state capital of Graz.

12,000 sensors offer maximum energy efficiency.

INNOVATOR

Despite its impressive history, the Red Bull Ring has succeeded in ensuring that its primary focus is on the future, with the site presenting itself as a hightech laboratory.

After all, motor sport has recognised the signs of the times and acts as a research centre for the automotive industry: new engines, sustainable fuels. Nowhere else can and must people develop vehicles and engines under such ‘condensed conditions’.

The high-tech standards that apply to the racing cars are also the norm for the facility itself. 12,000 sensors on the circuit, but also in the hotels, on the stud farm and in all the houses that belong to the Spielberg project, use state-of-the-art software to provide maximum energy efficiency. The sensors store millions of pieces of information (for example about temperature fluctuations or the utilisation of rooms) and enable the heating to always be

tailored to the actual needs.

The topic of safety also takes pole position at the Red Bull Ring. This is naturally partly due to the strict conditions that have to be met as a Formula 1 circuit, but also because of the desire to ensure maximum safety for the customers who use the race circuit for driver experiences during the week.

One safety feature is the new Race Control. Wolf: “We’ve installed 21 monitors for this purpose. But more importantly, 34 cameras have been dotted around the circuit, all of which have a 360-degree swivel range and can be operated individually.

This enables us to analyse every scene.”

Motor sport teaches us to quickly detect situations and correctly respond to them.

And the laboratory on the Spielberg shows how we can perfectly combine green technology with automotive clusters. redbullring.com

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I N N O V AT O R

STYRIA

L E AF BATTERY

Modelled on a water lily

CLA S SI C S

Styrians of the world

An off-roader like its ancestor: a Mercedes-Benz G-Class drives through the woods.

“For millions of years, nature has found productive ways to deal with challenges”, says Joachim Vetter, CEO of SinusPro, a Graz-based company specialising in the development of innovative components.

The technology that is taking ideas from the plant and animal kingdom is known as bionics.

A battery is currently being developed that is modelled on the underside of the leaf of the huge Victoria amazonica water lily. This leaf has multiple cavities, creating lift. When used for e-cars, this equates to an extremely light yet stable battery, the ducts in which contain coolant. sinuspro.at

What letter do many people associate with off-road vehicles? That’s right, G. Derived from the German word for off-road ‘Gelände’. Once in relation to the Puch G and now the Mercedes-Benz G-Class.

What’s that coming down the road? It looks just like a Puch G but is actually a Mercedes-Benz G-Class with a V8 petrol engine, 422 PS and a nine-speed automatic transmission instead of the rustic four-speed transmission of its ancestor (and that’s certainly what the Puch is).

A parallel test shows that when driving the Puch G from 1980, you get a sense of direct contact with your surroundings. The original Styrian vehicle, once developed by Steyr-Daimler-Puch in Graz, offers what used to appear in its specifications: off-road capability, robustness and tractive power. The same applies to the modern Mercedes-Benz G-Class, just not quite as directly.

If it weren’t for the iconic 54

indicators on the front wings and the steep, flat windscreen, you might not instantly notice how closely the two are related.

A digital cockpit, cool leather seats and refined materials adorn the places where the Puch G merely has switches, sheet metal and plastic.

But is there something about these two vehicles that hasn’t changed over the years? We’re ready to go, and as the first of us shuts the door, the other hesitates: Did you hear that?

Do it again. Okay. Now you. It can’t be!

But it is: when G-Class doors are closed, the sound they emit is exactly the same as it was four decades ago. And this sound essentially tells us everything we need to know about a G-Class, from the old Puch to the new Mercedes.

CO NTRO L MO DE

Collecting hazards All over the world, special testers drive cars to detect dangerous situations on the roads.

This enables the collation of data about potential accident hotspots and hazardous crossings. The Graz ALP.Lab, a test centre for automated driving, has found a simpler solution for this task. Sensors are used to analyse roads around the clock.

Computers evaluate the results and generate training data for driver assistance systems to increase road safety. alp-lab.at

INNOVATOR

Andritz is setting new standards in resourceconserving production with its PrimeLine hygiene paper machines.

T RICKY S TUF F !

Mission possible

DAIMLER AG, ANDRITZ

WERNER JESSNER, KARIN CERNY

When it comes to hygiene paper, innovation and sustainability count for Andritz.

It’s often the seemingly simple things that are particularly hard to manufacture: tissues, kitchen roll, toilet paper and serviettes are a few such examples.

Manufacturing these requires complex production systems with machine lengths of up to 65 metres and the use of energy and raw materials.

The mission isn’t just to offer solutions that make it possible to conserve resources on the machine, but also ones that help reduce or replace emissions from

INNOVATOR

upstream sources (fibres, electricity, water, chemicals). Andritz takes a holistic approach here and isn’t afraid to try new things: for example, it’s become the first ever company to use bio-synthetic natural gas to dry the paper in cooperation with the producer Sofidel. This makes it possible to vastly reduce CO² emissions. This is a significant step towards making the entire industry more sustainable.

The systems for manufacturing hygiene paper are in demand worldwide, as clearly demonstrated by recent commissioning activities and orders from Europe (ICT, MG Tec), the USA (Essity) and Asia (Hengan, Liansheng, Sun Paper).

The international group not only supplies innovative systems for the pulp and paper industry, but also for the hydropower sector and the metal processing industry.

SINGING WIRE

Sound check What does a wire sound like?

It’s important that no defects occur during production that are only noticed at a later time. To prevent this, control systems at voestalpine make the wires vibrate. A digital ear sounds an alarm in the event of any acoustic deviations. The data is sent directly to human inspectors’ tablets. This means the artificial intelligence acts like a detective, helping find and eliminate problems.

At voestalpine, human and artificial intelligence have long worked together harmoniously. voestalpine.com

andritz.com

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My avatar is going shopping Make your mobile phone a changing room: a virtual twin tries on our new clothes. And we can instantly see where they pinch or pull – three dimensionally!

Welcome to the fashion revolution from Graz.

Text Hannes Kropik Illustrations Federica Del Proposto

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T

he biggest disadvantage of shopping online to date is about to become a huge advantage: the ability to try on clothes. This is because we can not only check if a new outfit fits us, but instantly see what it will look like on the beach, in a bar or at home on the sofa.

And this is far from being a game. Online retail has been growing for years and the coronavirus pandemic has turboboosted the trend. The statistics platform Statista Global forecasts global e-commerce sales of around 2.37 trillion euros in 2023. Written out, that’s 2,370,000,000,000.

Raking in over 800 billion euros per year, the fashion industry enjoys a generous slice of this cake – and the Styrian start-up Reactive Reality wants to fundamentally change this industry.

The company was established in 2014 by three graduates from Graz University of Technology (TU Graz): CEO Stefan Hauswiesner, CTO Philipp Grasmug and COO Philipp Pani. They are also joined by Chief Scientist Dieter Schmalstieg, a computer science professor.

Together, they developed a virtual changing room. Based on augmented reality, this will enable people to try on clothes online and make better purchase decisions.

We spoke to CEO Stefan Hauswiesner about the basic idea, the right body dimensions and TU Graz’s excellent global reputation.

Modern-day shopping: send your digital twin to the shops from your bed and dress him/her as you like.

INNOVATOR

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the red bulletin innovator: Mr Hauswiesner, how does Reactive Reality hope to change the fashion market with its shopping tool Pictofit? stefan hauswiesner: By transforming the biggest disadvantage of online shopping in the fashion industry into an advantage: the ability to try on clothes. Our technology allows customers to do this virtually. That means that I can choose outfits online and see exactly what they look like on me in various different settings, for example on the street, on the beach or in a ballroom.

You can instantly tell if clothes are too tight under the armpits or too wide on the shoulders.

This naturally helps people make better purchasing decisions, and therefore results in fewer returns.

What do I need to do as a customer?

To create the avatar, your virtual twin, all you have to do is take a photo of your face. Other than that, to provide detailed recommendations and enable visualisation, our technology simply needs a few statistics that users can easily determine, such as their height, hip measurement, chest measurement etc.

How did a group of software engineers come up with the idea of developing a virtual changing room?

Indirectly. My doctoral project at TU Graz was actually to create a modern changing cubicle: a room with ten cameras, a large display screen and huge computing power.

But it was clear that this kind of 50,000 euro set-up wouldn’t be commercially viable in practice.

However, we liked the idea and stuck with it: now, we use images to create computer graphics, technology known as ‘imagebased rendering’. In other words, the graphics aren’t calculated artificially, like with computer 58

How does Reactive Reality want to change the fashion market?

By transforming the biggest disadvantage of online shopping into an advantage.

games for instance, but on the basis of the product photos that retailers can provide anyway.

So that means that twodimensional images become three-dimensional graphics?

And these adapt to the customer’s body – or more specifically, that of their avatar?

Exactly, our algorithms modify images in the blink of an eye.

When we first started out eight years ago, our initial prototype took a full hour to project an item of clothing onto a body using a really powerful computer. Today, we can do this on a mobile phone in less than 25 milliseconds.

Check how you’ll look – in multiple scenarios, such as at a vernissage.

Why is it so much faster now?

Because we now have multiple neural networks running in the background. We’ve used machine learning to train our computers to correctly recognise photos. They ‘see’ an item of clothing in a photo, calculate the optimum fit and ‘know’ what it would look like on a human body.

You and your co-founders all studied at TU Graz. Your Chief Scientist Dieter Schmalstieg is a professor and head of institute there. So Reactive Reality has been a Graz project through and through since the very beginning.

Yes, and that’s really not a surprise.

Many of our first employees also attended TU Graz. Professor

Stefan Hauswiesner CEO

Reactive Reality’s CEO first focussed on the idea of a digital changing room when writing his doctoral thesis.

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“We can easily keep pace on an international level thanks to our pool of highly intelligent minds” Qualifications from Graz University of Technology enjoy an excellent reputation worldwide – and attract international companies to the city.

“A

ugmented reality”, says university professor Dieter Schmalstieg, “is groundbreaking technology that can establish a new interactive medium that enables people to directly experience digital content in the real world. You can put on a special AR headset and move through computer-generated content.”

The 50-year-old from Lower Austria has worked at TU Graz since 2004 and has been head of the Faculty of Computer Science’s Institute of Computer Graphics and Vision since 2012.

“I’ve been fascinated by this technology for 20 years. Back then, I was a doctoral student – and augmented reality was a brand new idea. If you look how many billions Facebook, Apple

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and other tech companies are investing in this area, you can safely presume that in a few years, it will no longer simply be a fantasy devised by researchers in their protected ivory towers.”

Professor Schmalstieg’s institute at TU Graz currently has about a hundred employees in seven working groups, including students as part-time researchers.

“Austrian universities are very high-quality educational and

Augmented reality merges the digital and real worlds – and that’s no fantasy.

Dieter Schmalstieg HEAD OF THE INSTITUTE OF COMPUTER GRAPHICS AND VISION

Chose life in Graz after a year at the elite Stanford University in the USA.

research institutions”, he says, feeling “lucky that here in Graz, we can easily keep pace on an international level thanks to our pool of highly intelligent minds”.

Styrian teaching has such an impressive international reputation that many students don’t even stay until they’ve received their formal qualification as they’re recruited by large tech companies even before doing so. “But not everyone wants to move to the Silicon Valley. Companies like Amazon and Huawei are accommodating this fact and opening offices in Graz.”

After completing his studies in Vienna, Professor Schmalstieg himself spent a year as a postgraduate student at the renowned Stanford University: “I was young and wanted to see what the world had to offer.

This elite Californian university was certainly impressive. In the end though, I decided to follow my cultural identity: I’m an Austrian and a European and love life in Graz.”

Professor Schmalstieg is delighted that Reactive Reality, as a spin-off from TU Graz, is taking theory that was previously difficult to convey to the public and putting it into practice. “In fundamental research, we’re interested in whether an abstract idea can be implemented.

Reactive Reality is developing software that actually works in reality.” Of course, the virtual changing room’s success would also be an invaluable advertisement for studying at TU Graz: “Technology platforms are constantly revolutionising society. The level of demand for experts is and will remain extremely high.”

Gain insights into science:

INNOVATOR

PRIVAT

RESEAR CH

I N N O V AT O R

Reactive Reality’s Vice President formerly worked at Google and Pinterest. How can you attract such an ally?

He understood our idea and was able to see that the market is moving in our direction.

Immerse yourself in the beautiful new fashion world on your mobile – and discover outfits that fit perfectly.

INNOVATOR

Schmalstieg’s institute is regarded as one of the world’s best and most successful institutes in the fields of augmented and virtual reality.

Many graduates go straight from Graz to one of the tech world’s Big Five (editorial note: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft). I actually believe that a company like ours needs to come from the world of technology rather than that of fashion. The fashion world naturally has extensive expertise too, but we have the skills to develop the simplest and most efficient software solutions possible.

too. Your Vice President of Global Sales, Steve Meaney, previously held senior positions at Google and then Pinterest. How can you get a man like that on board?

With his CV, Steve has long been able to choose where he wants to work. He chose us as he understood our idea and was able to see that the market is moving in our direction. There’s a huge amount of interest in our work.

We’ve experienced major growth over the last two years in particular and now have 60 employees.

projects – including one for a large, German luxury brand – and will go online with them in the first quarter of 2022. We’re expecting the market to really take off in the next two years. The big tech firms are investing huge sums in this area. But experience has shown that the key innovations come from small, independent companies…

In addition to its headquarters in Graz, Reactive Reality now has offices in Paris, Tokyo and the Silicon Valley in San Francisco

Where is the journey heading in the next few years?

We’re in the final development stages of two major customer

Take a look further into the future: reactivereality.com

… like Reactive Reality?

Let me put it this way: I think we’ve got a strong hand of cards and are playing a major role in terms of development.

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An artist in the INNOVATOR? That's right, because he’s teaching us how we can reinvent the world.

An interview with the Styrian Erwin Wurm, 67, who became one of the world’s most successful contemporary artists with his One Minute Sculptures.

Text Wolfgang Wieser Photos Lottermann and Fuentes

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I N N O V AT O R

A portrait of Erwin Wurm, on the left in front of three of his works (from the Xersönliches Shuttle: left): ‘Standing Fahrgäste können ihre ‘Step’ Vegetal’, Ottobahn per App and ‘Lifting’. bestellen, die autonom fahrenden Gondeln holen sie pünktlich ab.

The man who gave our world new dimensions

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broom sticks out from the bottom of former supermodel Claudia Schiffer. It protrudes from under her trench coat with its bright yellow bristles, while Claudia looks completely relaxed, as though totally unfazed by the situation. The image is part of a series that Erwin Wurm created for the German edition of ‘Vogue’ in 2009. Other pictures show Claudia Schiffer playing with oranges or standing on a table with a chair balanced on her left shoulder.

As to how he got her to agree to the one with the broom... “I’ve no idea, she simply said ‘yes’. I was surprised!” It’s surprising for us too, but also irritating and questionable, in a positive sense.

Then again, Erwin Wurm has also got a father and a nun from the Benedictine convent in Admont involved in his sculptures. In this case, his photographic sculptures (‘Brothers and Sisters’, 2002). Father Liborius lies on the floor with his arms by his sides and his stomach protruding; Sister Ruth stuck her index and middle fingers in a bread roll.

And then there’s us, the ordinary people, who, under Wurm’s direction, become contributors to his works of art – like the man who used his forehead to hold two yellow tennis balls in place on a white plinth at an exhibition at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt (‘Astronomical Purpose’, 2014).

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We become contributors to Wurm’s works under his direction. The artist calls this participation ‘Performed by the public’.

Erwin Wurm calls this participation ‘Performed by the public’, and it’s frequently an essential part of his ‘One Minute Sculptures’.

These are what made Erwin Wurm famous, really famous – the best example of his global renown far beyond galleries and museums is that the US rock band Red Hot Chili Peppers was inspired by him for their ‘Can’t Stop’ video.

STUDIO ERWIN WURM

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I N N O V AT O R “I had doubts and asked myself if it was all just stupid. But the One Minute Sculptures were instantly a huge success.”

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1 2 The former supermodel Claudia Schiffer, staged for the German edition of ‘Vogue’ (2009). Schiffer is now considered an art connoisseur.

At the time even Erwin Wurm was surprised that she allowed herself to be portrayed in such an astonishing fashion.

INNOVATOR

3 Erwin Wurm’s childhood home, albeit with completely distorted dimensions, became famous as the ‘Narrow House’.

It appeared next to a Palazzo on the Canal Grande at the Venice Biennale and could be admired in the Kunstraum Dornbirn art museum, as pictured here in 2011. Dimensions: 7 × 1.3 × 16 m.

The One Minute Sculptures were Erwin Wurm’s breakthrough. He says so himself. Everything started with an exhibition in the Künstlerhaus Bremen art museum in 1997: “I’ve always been interested in playing with objects and actions. Then, I was invited to an exhibition by the Bremer Kunstverein (Bremen Art Association). I’d long considered trying short-lived sculptures, contrary to the old masters like Michelangelo who created works intended to last an eternity. So I went to Bremen and tried everything myself – and yes, I had doubts and asked myself if it was all just stupid. But the One Minute Sculptures were instantly a huge success.”

Erwin Wurm was 43 at the time.

He’s been able to live “pretty well” from his art for a few years now. His gallerist Thaddaeus Ropac says that Wurm is interested in everything that unbalances everyday life. To this end, he is reinventing sculpture – you can safely put it that way. He actually wanted to be a painter but was put in the sculpture class at the Mozarteum University Salzburg.

He’s getting his own back by taking an intense look at the possibilities offered by sculpture. This confrontation is becoming a revolution. Today, Wurm is regarded as one of the “most successful contemporary artists” (Wikipedia).

He calls everything he has created to date sculptures: gherkins as tall as his shoulder, marble bread rolls with an 80-centimetre diameter, fat pink cars (and you can take that literally). All things that – as mentioned earlier – are questionable.

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1 Erwin Wurm leads a very normal life, as he says himself. He eats lunch at the same time every day. Here, he’s making ‘Cacio e pepe’, a typical pasta dish from Rome with pepper and Parmesan.

2 Plenty of room for his artworks: the pieces are created in a light-flooded hall.

3 The artist has a great proximity to cars – here, he’s taking a rest on a polyester Mercedes W123 (100 × 205 × 405 cm).

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“I’ve got a plan as to how I can get closer to the world. Two terms are important to me in that regard: paradox and absurdity. I try to gain new insights.”

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the red bulletin innovator: If I’m being honest, man-sized gherkins, a broom in former supermodel Claudia Schiffer’s bottom, a fat, pink car – many of your works initially made me smile, even if they’re not meant to be a joke.

What reaction are you after, i.e. what’s the right reaction? erwin wurm: I’m not after a particular reaction. I’ve got a plan as to how I can get closer to the world.

Two terms are important to me in that regard: paradox and absurdity.

I try to gain new insights through my perspective on reality and everyday life.

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You take the banal and make it great. Why? To make it look ridiculous?

Because I’ve realised that it lets you question things.

What are your works of art? Attacks? And if so, who are they targeting?

Why do people write? Because they have a need to express themselves. I first and foremost do things for myself. But it’s important to me that others are interested in what I’m doing and that my works give them food for thought. After all, even the best picture in the world – let’s say the ‘Mona Lisa’ – has no significance if it’s simply gathering dust in a cellar.

How do I know if a dust sculpture is art, and if so, if it’s good art? Or to put it another way: what does it take to be recognised as an artist and be successful?

If you accept my invitation to look at one of my works and think about it, I’ve already overcome an important hurdle. I naturally want my works to grab people. But that’s something I really don’t care about while I’m working on them.

INNOVATOR

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I find the dust sculptures very touching, perhaps because they document absence…

There are no people; I show abandoned places. It was also about whether things are still impactful and can still convey feelings. And they clearly are and do.

What inspires you? You once said that Donald Duck was an important influence.

He was characterised as useless. I always liked him because he was a loser. But he never gave up. He was a get-back-up-again guy.

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STYRIA “I was a poor student.

So I started working with materials that others had thrown away.”

Erwin Wurm One Minute Info

“Austria is my quarry”

You started out with no money so used materials that were of zero value to others. Did this approach help you with your considerations?

That’s right. I was a poor student.

So I started working with materials that others had thrown away. I had a studio above a carpentry shop for a while and used the waste wood.

Then, I had one over a can factory, so started to work with cans.

Born on 27 July 1954 in Bruck an der Mur Raised in Kapfenberg, from age six in Graz Lives in Limberg and Vienna Marital status Married Children 3 Food Japanese and Greek, in both cases lots of vegetables and fish

Today, Erwin Wurm has money, a castle and an eight-person team (including himself). He used to drive an Aston Martin but now has a Tesla. For environmental reasons.

He tried living in New York but returned to his roots – even though he knows that residing in Austria reduces the value of his work (yes, that really is the case): “But I need the madness you find here. Austria is my quarry, my material.”

Wurm lives a normal life, a good life: he gets up, eats breakfast and goes to his studio: “I eat lunch at the same time every day.” Japanese, Greek, vegetables, fish. And he laughs as he says: “I’ve not worked at night more than ten times in my entire life. I’m a right bricklayer.”

Drink Water, wine, beer Music I like a wide range of music – Snoop Dogg, 50 Cent, still Dire Straits, the Sex Pistols, classical music, Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler.

Films Love them; favourite film: ‘The White Ribbon’ by Michael Haneke Books I read a lot. My favourite is Philip Roth, ‘Exit Ghost’.

Artists My favourite painter is Georg Baselitz.

Car Oh wow, that’s a tough one. I’ve got an electric car – as I want to live responsibly.

Country I love our countryside and don’t know of a better country.

City Not a city, a place – the Greek island of Hydra, where there aren’t any cars.

Next travel destination Berlin or Paris, where my next exhibitions will take place.

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Where do you create your artworks? Do you finish them in your mind before they take shape in the truest sense of the phrase?

There’s always an idea but it’s often only vague. I almost became a designer for a while. That means I recorded my ideas and had someone implement them for me – until I realised that I was losing access to my work. I therefore started doing everything with my own hands again. Because this also gives you the opportunity not to stick too closely to the initial idea, but to let yourself be swept along. It’s like the work’s taking you by the hand. The artist Gerhard Richter once said: “My pictures are more intelligent than I am.” For a long time, I didn’t understand what he meant, but now I do.

Are you interested in the prices of your artworks?

Of course. (Laughs.)

Who sets the prices?

My gallerist and I. It’s a game – things only have value in our society if they cost something (for example: the König Galerie in Berlin currently has a polyester telephone measuring 12.3 × 9.5 × 26.5 cm for 25,000 euros).

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INNOVATOR

I N N O V AT O R

In 2021, you were one of the first artists to publish a work, a 15-second video sequence (‘Breath In, Breathe Out’) showing a red Porsche turning into a ‘Fat Car’, as an NFT, a digital object that is extremely popular right now. Was that because it gave you a new form of expression or for other reasons?

My son pestered me about it. He’s a complete nerd and is fascinated by the technology. Plus, my gallerist from Berlin told me he was going to hold an exhibition with just NFT. It’s not really my world, but it worked well.

The work fetched 855 euros.

It fetched 461 times 1,000 dollars (855 euros) – in the 24 hours that it was on the market.

What are you currently working on?

Several new sculptures, but also some paintings.

So you’re finally able to paint now? You were banished to the sculptor class as a student weren’t you?

What I’m creating are really paintings, but I’m calling them flat sculptures.

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STUDIO ERWIN WURM

1 Radiant beauty in a rural setting: ‘Fat Convertible’ from 2019 (133 × 240 × 405 cm), cast aluminium, painted

2 When a truck does a headstand it’s time to ‘Stand quiet and look out over the Mediterranean Sea’. The artwork comprising the truck and mixed media measures 874 × 240 × 274 cm.

3 When taking a break from his art, Erwin Wurm dedicates himself to down-to-earth tasks – here, he’s sowing grass seeds.

One last question: if I were to slip on a leather jacket and hold a watering can in my mouth like the woman in one of your photographic sculptures, would that make me an artist, a work of art or nothing at all?

If you do so under my direction, you’ll briefly be a work of art, otherwise you’ll be a cool dude with a watering can in his mouth.

A comprehensive overview of the artist’s works can be found at: erwinwurm.at

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STYRIA

STEIERMARK

I N N O V AT O R

‘The Graz Vigil’ was a 2020 art project by the Australian-Belgium choreographer Joanne Leighton. Within the scope of the ‘La Strada’ festival, 732 people from Graz, two each day of the calendar year, had the opportunity to peacefully observe their home city for an hour from the Schlossberg.

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INNOVATOR

I N N O V AT O R

CONSTRUCT ION

Literally out of the woods There’s an ancient idiom that can today be taken literally to represent the way we are using innovation and sustainability to overcome the climate crisis, as well as trendsetting technology from Styria that is soaring to global success.

ALEX KIRSCHNER

Text Hannes Kropik

* The idiom ‘out of the woods’ means to emerge from difficulty and has been around since ancient Roman times.

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S T E I EI NR NM

STYRIA

Oskar Beer has a vision.

If it’s up to the state guild director for Styrian timber builders, an entire district of Graz will be built using timber structures.

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The sun sets beside the Rauchkoppe in the Eisenerz Alps. Following a storm, the cool air bathes the Hintergößgraben area in the forest enterprise Franz Mayr-Melnhof-Saurau in a soft yellow light as evening falls.

of Culture and is a City of Design, so why shouldn’t we also become the timber construction capital?”

A Styrian brainwave The technical basis for Oskar Beer’s idea also comes from Styria. In the mid-1990s, Professor Gerhard Schickhofer, Head of the Institute of Timber Engineering and Wood Technology at TU Graz, developed cross-laminated timber (CLT) from multiple solid wood panels. At up to twenty metres long and four metres wide, these highly stable panels can be prefabricated with millimetre precision and enable spectacular timber constructions that are advancing into new dimensions. A prime example is

Spruce seedlings in the morning light in the district of Schladnitz.

The spruce cone as a nursery for the seedlings and the rotten piece of wood next to it document nature’s cycle.

NORBERT WEBER

And not as a dreamy eco-enclave, but as a pioneering architectural high-tech quarter that sets new standards in urban sustainability – from ultra-modern apartment blocks through stimulating nurseries and schools to a supermarket, all made of wood.

What’s on the drawing board here is far more than an aesthetic comeback of mankind’s oldest building material: it’s the ecological and economic foundation for a city of the future.

In fact, the development on the grounds of the former Reininghaus brewery in the west of the city, where large-scale construction is taking place until 2025, closely reflects Oskar Beer’s ideas: “There are admittedly buildings made of other materials too, but a lot of wood is being used.”

A city district made of wood would not only make ecological sense, but could also boost tourism: “With over 61 percent of its area carpeted in forest, Styria is predestined for timber construction. A city district made of wood would offer people added value and could attract visitors. Graz has already been the European Capital

NM OA VR AT K O R

I N N O V AT O R

RES EARCH

Technology in the forest How is climate change affecting the forestry industry? Over 3,000 measuring points in Styrian forests provide data for the future.

‘Dynamic forest typing’ is the name that has been given to an interdisciplinary project of the state forest directorate for Styria. “We want to know how climate change could affect our forests. Some 55,000 people in Styria still make their living directly from the timber industry”, explains Heinz Lick of the state forest directorate.

tria’s largest private forest (spanning 32,400 hectares). “It goes without saying that we want to optimally manage our sites. Not just because we earn our livelihood from the sale of wood, but also because we’re aware of our social responsibility: the more wood we produce, the more CO² we can trap from the air.”

Under the direction of Professor Harald Vacik from the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna, twelve institutions across Austria with over a hundred experts were involved in data acquisition and the development of special algorithms.

“Calculations by experts from a wide range of disciplines, such as silviculture, meteorology, geology, climate, water and soil, all flow into this model”, says Lick.

The right mix of trees is crucial. The spruce grows naturally in many places in Styria and traditionally dominates the landscape. However, its stock is becoming increasingly endangered due to extreme climatic changes coupled with bark beetle infestations.

To this end, the widest range of parameters were determined in detail at 3,000 representative points. Heinz Lick: “The temperature, soil humidity and nutrient supply control whether and how well a tree can grow in a given location.”

Calculations are being made as to how different global warming scenarios would affect certain tree species and site types by 2050 and 2085. “We’re providing the people who work in the forests with detailed arguments”, says Lick.

“We know that the mix of tree species will change significantly in the areas at lower altitude; the hot summer days and availability of water will become limiting factors”, says Willibald Ehrenhöfer. “Conversely, at higher altitudes, we’ll find better growth conditions and longer vegetation periods than today.

This will lead to the upper tree line moving up by about 200 metres by the end of the century. That means that the forest areas will expand, enabling us to continue providing wood as a sustainable raw material and amazing building material for a carbon-neutral future.” waldtypisierung.steiermark.at mm-forst.at

Willibald Ehrenhöfer was involved in the project as a member of the steering group. The forest director of the forest enterprise Franz Mayr-Melnhof-Saurau is responsible for Aus-

INNOVATOR

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STYRIA

the HoHo in Vienna-Aspern: the world’s second highest wooden tower, with 24 floors and a height of 84 metres.

In 2019, King Carl XVI. Gustaf of Sweden rewarded the now 59-yearold from Upper Styria with the Marcus Wallenberg Prize for his constructive (in the truest sense of the word) idea. Endowed with two million Swedish kroner (around 190,000 euros), the award has been presented since 1981 and is considered the wood equivalent of the Nobel Prize.

The Prize is awarded for “pathbreaking scientific achievements which contribute significantly to broadening knowledge and to technical development within the fields of importance to forestry and forest industries”. And cross-laminated timber is truly becoming ever more important within the construction industry. “There are currently 76 production sites worldwide, with a further 28 in the planning stages.

The production capacity presently stands at 2.4 million cubic metres per year and is expected to grow to 3.8 million by 2025.”

In addition to innovation, Professor Schickhofer’s work is driven by the idea of sustainability: “It’s

The ‘Eagle’, the mountain-top restaurant on the Kreischberg designed by the architecture firm Viereck Architekten, was completed in 2020 – and has won multiple awards, including the ‘Iconic Award: Innovative Architecture’.

well known that this term originated from the forestry sector.

In 1713, Hans Carl von Carlowitz encouraged people to only cut as much wood as could be replaced through planned reforestation.”

At 2,000 metres above sea level, the ‘Eagle’ offers spectacular panoramic views. The interior of the crystal-shaped restaurant is dominated

by Styrian spruce wood.

Living in a dream home

1.01 million hectares of Styria are carpeted by forest. That equates to about 61.6 percent of the state’s total area (average for Austria: 47.6 percent).

86 percent of the trees are coniferous, 9.5 percent are hardwood and 4.5 percent are softwood.

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The demand for cross-laminated timber is not only growing on large construction sites, but also for private home construction. Josef Deisl is a forest owner and one of Austria’s largest sauna builders; the Deisls have been firmly rooted in the wood and stone business since 1520. It was therefore “only a matter of course” that he had a wooden house built for his family of six.

After a construction period of just eight months, the Deisls moved into their dream home in Schladming at Christmas 2019. This later won the Styrian timber construction award in the ‘private homes’ category in 2021. The parquet floor

VIERECK

The forest in numbers:

INNOVATOR

I N NSOTVE AT I E RO MR A R K

I N N O V AT O R

MATERIALS SCIENCE

“Wood tells its own story” Architect Marleen Viereck’s love of using wood in her designs is due to its soul and vitality.

The Red Bulletin Innovator: Why has wood become such a popular building material among architects?

Marleen Viereck: There’s not just a new generation of architects, but also of builders. We can talk about a ‘Fridays for Future’ effect: people attach great importance to sustainable, regionally available materials and want to build with the least possible impact on future generations.

Established by their father Ewald in 1984, Marleen Viereck manages Viereck Architekten in cooperation with her brother Bernhard.

She says that the locations in Kindberg and Graz “enable the necessary vision for urban and natural construction”.

INNOVATOR

Wood has been used for time immemorial. Why is it still such a fascinating material?

Because it constantly offers new possibilities – and new possibilities are the essence of architecture: we wake up every day with the desire to build something that people have never seen before.

Do you have different technical possibilities to previous generations?

Of course – that’s why timber construction has been reinvented in recent years. We can create perfectly scaled 3D models of buildings and

prefabricate all the parts in a factory with millimetre precision. That saves time and therefore money. For example, the ‘Eagle’, the mountain-top restaurant on the Kreischberg, was ‘only’ assembled on the construction site. We’d have had no other way of achieving such a short construction period. This naturally depended on a detailed, integral planning process.

What differentiates wood from other building materials?

Wood is alive. And just like people, it visibly changes with age. Owners need to be aware that timber façades will turn grey over time. Wood isn’t completely clean. It has a soul and vitality. Wood tells its own story. viereck.at

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The Styrian forests hold 307.3 million cubic metres over bark (m3ob*) of wood. That equates to about 27 percent of the total volume in Austria (1,135 million m3ob).

The L-shaped timber house in Schladming has its own pool. The building was designed by Hannes Sampl of the architecture firm dunkelschwarz, a school friend of Josef Deisl.

* 1 m3ob equates to 1 cubic metre but measures the volume of wood in a standing tree with the bark.

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20.2 percent of all Styrian trees are between 21 and 40 years old. 12.6 percent are up to 20 years old and 3.7 percent are over 140 years old.

is made of solid oak, the walls of white varnished spruce: “We notice that the natural materials have positive properties. The mellow room climate is soothing; the entire atmosphere is far calmer than in our previous home.”

Graz housing psychologist Dr Harald Deinsberger-Deinsweger explains the reasoning for this: “We perceive our environment through our senses, including the way it looks and physically feels.”

These stimuli quasi supply our brain with ‘basic nutrients’.

Whereas screens demand our direct attention and constantly zap our energy, naturally grained wooden surfaces subliminally supply us with it. “What we subtly perceive helps us to recuperate. As a result, wood in indoor settings is relaxing, stimulating and good for all kinds of cognitive activities.”

It’s also important for peace of mind that the wooden house is completely child-friendly: “On just the third day after we moved in, our youngest daughter started drawing on the walls with a felt tip pen”, recalls Josef Deisl. “We’re waiting a bit still, then we’re simply going to sand down the affected areas and re-varnish them.” The next generation is already enjoying wood as a construction material. hhh.at tugraz.at deisl.com wohnspektrum.at

INNOVATOR

ALBRECHT IMANUEL SCHNABEL, OLIVER WOLF FOTOGRAFIE

In total, the Deisl family avails of a living area of around 300 square metres. The dining table is a charcoaled oak monolith (created by the Salzburg joiner Stefan Knopp). In other words, the tabletop was cut from the core of the tree in a single piece.

I N N O V AT O R

Gabi König-Gruber and her husband Josef König enjoy working with wood in their workshop in St. Radegund bei Graz: “It can absorb and release moisture.

Wood ‘breathes’.

That’s good for the room climate.”

KN OWLEDGE

The sum of many benefits Woodworker Gabi König-Gruber and her husband Josef König run a family business in St. Radegund bei Graz. She summarises the key benefits of wood as a building material.

1. Wood is a dry, warm material that you can work with in the same quality throughout the year.

2. Wood is installed dry.

There’s no need for drying times like with concrete or bricks.

3. Wood can be worked. It has minimal impact on the health of the people processing it.

Simple woodworking machines and tools are used on construction sites.

4. Timber constructions are completed faster and are drier. They affect the neighbours less.

5. Timber walls are usually thinner so you get more living space with the same external dimensions.

6. Wood-based insulation materials can be used for timber construction, e.g. soft fibreboard or cellulose. Construction is ecological and does not require oil-based plastic insulation.

7. In the field of construction, we primarily work with spruce, plentiful stocks of which can be found and regenerated in local forests.

8. Wood is carbon neutral.

Timber houses naturally store CO².

koenig-gruber.at

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RED BULL RING

MOTORSPORTHIGHLIGHTS 2022

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STYRIA

AP P ETI SE RS

Better taste for the world

STELLA, LUPI SPUMA, FLORIAN ANDERGASSEN

Nine pioneering food and drink ideas from Styria make nourishment an experience.

Veronika Mitteregger best likes to drink the juice straight, chilled and from a wine glass.

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INNOVATOR

I N N O V AT O R V INE REVOLUTION

“I want to make grape juice popular” Free from alcohol, but as inspiring as wine – Veronika Mitteregger has reinterpreted juice in the form of ‘Flein’.

As a teenager, Veronika Mitteregger was a revolutionary.

She left behind her parents’ vineyards in southern Styria and moved to Vienna to study communication science and art history. Today, the now 39-yearold has two boys and, since the lockdowns, loves spending time in the countryside again. However, she still has revolutionary ideas: her Flein is a tasty alternative to wine. the red bulletin innovator: When did you come up with the idea of Flein? veronika mitteregger: In 2015 when I was pregnant with my

Veronika has won over her friends: Kellerei Kurtatsch in South Tyrol also produces Flein.

Gross & Gross are two married couples who jointly produce wine and Flein. Johannes (right) and Michael are Veronika’s brothers.

INNOVATOR

second son. In our family, a good glass of wine is an inherent part of a meal. You talk about it and enjoy it together. I really missed that. I didn’t just want a glass of water with my meals. Or a sickly sweet juice, so I thought: why can’t we devote the same level of attention to juice as to wine?

What’s special about your juice?

I remembered spending many childhood days wandering through the vineyards tasting the berries.

My parents used fun and games to teach us to distinguish between Muscat and Sauvignon ones. I wanted to create a juice where you can identify the grape variety, just like with wine. One that offers a similar taste experience. A drink that I can enjoy straight and chilled from a wine glass; that opens up a new dimension for me that didn’t previously exist in the alcohol-free sector.

How did your family react to the idea?

My dad was sceptical and said that if it were that easy to preserve berry flavours in a juice, fruit juice producers would have already done it. But they don’t have such highquality grapes. My brothers and my sisters-in-laws from Gross & Gross instantly loved the idea. One issue we had was that of not destroying the flavours during the heating process. We took advice from juice experts in that regard. And when we press the grapes, we base the process on the one used to make Champagne.

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STYRIA S OY ALTERNATIVE An exclusive location: the grapes from the ‘Flein vineyards’ – like this one in Gorca – are solely pressed to make the juice.

A sauce that unites two worlds When Europe and Asia make eyes at one another, Japanese soy sauce is the perfect way to bring them together. Its Styrian counterpart can do even more – and without the soy.

What exactly does that mean?

It’s all about the extent to which the grapes are pressed. We chose a maximum of 55 percent – which corresponds to the pressing level used for Champagne. There are now three Flein producers from three wine-growing regions. They harvest the grapes earlier than for wine to obtain greater acidity.

You’ve got to be extremely precise; if you miss a day – for example due to a family member’s birthday – you can find yourself on a really tight schedule to achieve the desired taste.

And did your dad like the end product?

He doesn’t think Flein tastes like Sauvignon wine, but like the juice that comes freshly out of the press. That was a taste that was previously reserved for vintners.

And we’ve managed to capture it.

I’m very proud of the fact.

Peter Troißinger has reinterpreted classic soy sauce. His version not only tastes great with sushi, but also roast pork.

It’s often chance encounters that get innovative ideas off the ground.

Peter Troißinger, 35, can still clearly remember working in the Steirereck in Vienna (ranked as the 12th best restaurant in the world): “A farmer brought by some flour from sweet lupins and said that it contained high levels of protein.

At the time, I couldn’t really do very much with the product.”

Years later, he thought about the lupins again while trying to develop something like a soy sauce but from Styria. “There are no comparable fermented seasoning sauces in Europe. Why should we commit to sourcing most products locally but still import sauces?”

Lupins, a type of bean that is native to Austria, have a similar protein content to soy. They are a suitable European alternative for producing the typical Japanese umami (savoury) flavour.

Troißinger runs his 3-toque Malerwinkl restaurant and hotel in Vulkanland (the volcano country).

His “soy-free soy sauce” is an allrounder.

“My lupin sauce enables you to replicate a piece of Japan from local products”, says the top chef. “But it’s also ideal for seasoning the juices from roast pork.” Travel to Asia and back with a single product. ferment-tastic.com

A trio of developers: Peter Troißinger (centre) with the brothers Christof (left) and Thomas WinklerHermaden. Christof is a cellar master, Thomas a microbiologist.

Where does the name come from?

It started out as a surrogate name, as a ‘fine’ alternative to wine (‘Wein’ in German). However, there also used to be a pub with this name near the American embassy in Vienna. It’s where I had my first few dates with my husband. So the name ‘Flein’ had good connotations for me, which is probably why we stuck with it. flein.at

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I N N O V AT O R Blue prawns sizzle in a frying pan – a slightly sweet and nutty delicacy.

MOUNT AIN R I VER SEAFOOD

LUPI SPUMA, DIETER BRASCH, WHITE PANTHER/WERNER KRUG

Hawaiian prawns turn blue in Styria Why the maritime creatures feel so at home in Styria – and how the migratory background enriches our culinary world.

INNOVATOR

Prawn larvae in a net: they are delicate to breed and need special food.

Young prawns are sensitive creatures. They can’t eat the same food as their parents. “That’s why we’ve got our own algae laboratory”, says Stefan Weiser, Managing Director of White Panther, the mountain prawn supplier from Edlach.

The idea for the mountain prawns stemmed from a desire to use the waste heat from the wood gas power plant. The pools of water from the Almback river are heated to 28 degrees and enriched with sea salt.

White Panther is the only company in Europe to breed its own prawns. Comparable companies order the larvae in

the USA rather than breeding the prawns themselves. “It’s a delicate process”, says Weiser. “You need different pools and have to be careful to avoid inbreeding.”

The idea of the company doing everything itself came from necessity. In 2017, America was hit by several hurricanes that destroyed many hatcheries.

Where did you get the first two parents? “We found them in Hawaii”, says Weiser. “They asked us if we wanted to try breeding the demanding blue prawns too.”

Astonishingly, they were instantly happy in Styria. It was the start of a success story. whitepanther.com

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STYRIA SWEE T T RE ATS

“Our fish chocolate is a major hit in China”

But you still didn’t give up?

Of course not. We ultimately decided to use red dulse seaweed from Ireland and soaked it in a sugar solution to enhance its natural nutty taste. We then roasted it so it no longer tastes like you’re taking a mouthful of sea water. The result was our seaweed caramel. To provide a little contrasting sweetness, I then added pineapple, which gives the chocolate a lightness and acidity.

Anyone who wants to see how chocolate is made should visit the Zotter family in Riegersburg.

Josef Zotter, 61, established the chocolate factory in 1999 and shares his passion for crazy ideas with his daughter Julia, 34. Not all of these have prevailed. Varieties that have flopped are buried in the graveyard of ideas. A symbolic gravestone is erected for them. the red bulletin innovator: Julia, what drives you to invent unusual types of chocolate? julia zotter: For me, the coolest moment is when I throw an idea into the room and everyone asks where it will work and who’s likely to eat it. For instance, that’s what happened with our seaweed chocolate. And to be honest, all the samples tasted awful as they were extremely salty.

You’ve established a subsidiary in Shanghai. Are people’s tastes there different?

Definitely. In China, for example, people eat dried fish skin as crisps.

We simply wouldn’t do that, despite eating trout skin. Unlike in Europe, China has no tradition of chocolate. That also means there are few prejudices there though.

What are your bestsellers in China?

Dark chocolate is very popular; people aren’t keen on really sweet stuff. And our hand-made fish chocolate is a major hit. On the other hand, chilli chocolate doesn’t work at all. People in China tend to associate it more with something salty, so it instinctively triggers repulsion, like seaweed chocolate does for us.

How is the fish chocolate made?

It’s based on trout soup. In fact, our fish chocolate bar is nothing more than a Thai dish with a sweet twist.

In Austria, it unfortunately ended up in our graveyard of ideas. zotter.at

Organic cocoa beans processed by Zotter grow in the Huallaga valley in northern Peru.

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ZOTTER SCHOKOLADE, JEFF MANGIONE/KURIER/PICTUREDESK.COM

Julia Zotter is the daughter of chocolate pioneer Josef Zotter. She shares his passion for new, wild creations – including roast seaweed and fish soup.

I N N O V AT O R

Julia Zotter and her dad Josef like playing with cocoa beans.

Experimentation is in their blood.

STYRIA CHEESE

The treasure from the silver mine

For a cheese to mature well, it needs a high humidity (between 75 and 98 percent) and a constant temperature (between 7 and 15 degrees). Artificial systems are built to create these ideal conditions.

That is, unless you live in Arzberg, a town in the Grazer Bergland that is home to a former silver mine which naturally offers the optimum conditions for maturing cheese. Documents dating all the way back to the 14th century mention an ‘ancient mine’ but the tunnels were closed for economic reasons in 1927. They remained that way until Schaubergwerk Arzberg (re)opened the site in 1995 as a tourist attraction for people wanting to see how silver was once mined.

During maturation, the cheese is brushed with salt water.

The cheese requires a high humidity to optimally mature.

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Cheese lover Franz Möstl was also curious about what else could be done with the old tunnels. “Franz travelled around Switzerland a lot and saw cheese being matured in caves and mines there”, says his daughter-in-law Cornelia Reisinger, 35, who is responsible for marketing the tunnel cheese.

“The tunnels provide 98 percent humidity without us doing anything and a constant temperature of ten degrees.”

But the best thing about storing the precious cheese in former silver tunnels is that “we’ve never had any problems with foreign mould attacking the cheese as silver has an antibacterial effect.” The cheese is therefore matured in the tunnels 100 metres below the ground.

Naturally, organically and in a very relaxed manner. almenland-stollenkaese.at

BEER

“Black with a splash of milk” Two young beer brewers from Kapfenberg are adding a new twist to the classic drink by adding coriander, hemp and, that’s right, even milk.

“What matters is that we like it”, says Thomas Winkler, better known as one half of Tom & Harry – the latter being Harald Kristen – the young, innovative beer brewers from Kapfenberg.

Everything began back in 2013.

Harry had just returned from spending a semester overseas in Canada and raved to his friend about the incredible types of beer available there. Not long after, the utility room in Harry’s parents’ house was filled with mulled wine warmers – and the first few trials made them thirsty for more. The hobby developed into a successful company with growing sales figures.

INNOVATOR

ALMENLAND STOLLENKÄSE, NICOLESEISER.AT, GENUSSREICH FREILICHTMOMENTE

A former mine tunnel provides optimal conditions for maturing cheese – and leaves killer bacteria no chance.

I N N O V AT O R C IDER

Krummstiel, Maschansker and Schafnase apples – old heroes rise to victory The best cider in the world comes from Styria – because only the best apples are used to produce it.

Thomas Winkler (left) and Harald Kristen come together as Tom & Harry to brew beer that they themselves like to drink.

Following innovative varieties such as hemp beer (made using the flowers), Tom & Harry also experimented with dark beer.

The “short black with a splash of milk”, as their jet-black beer with the catchy name ‘Drunken Cat’ is described, is a classic milk stout.

Previously, you’d have had to travel to England to enjoy these fine roasted flavours with an exciting, sweet note. “The addition of milk sugar gives the beer a creamy texture and makes it taste a bit like dark chocolate”, enthuses Tom. The Styrian beer pioneers have plenty more ideas too. They’ve just launched ‘Orange Utan’, a Belgian wheat beer flavoured with orange peel and coriander. They’re also excited about a fruity alcohol-free beer. But what still matters is that they like the taste. tomandharry.beer

INNOVATOR

“Cider used to be a poor man’s drink”, says the young vintner David Kargl, 32. “Beer was too expensive and there was no wine in the Murtal district, so left-over apples were simply used to make cheap cider for the farmhands.”

This gave cider a negative image that it struggled to shake off.

Since 2009, Kargl has been committed to changing this with KühbreinMost. He is rethinking the ancient craft. The apples that he upcycles are not waste products but first-class, age-old apple rarities

Lots of sunlight: the south-facing orchard is located on the Kühbreinhof farm in Gaal in the Murtal district at about 880 metres above sea level.

such as Krummstiel, Maschansker, Schafnase or Champagnerrenette apples, which all have a delightful natural taste. Straight after being pressed, the juice, which is beautifully light in colour, is

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MUSHROOMS

Macrofungi with style His mushrooms look like cauliflower and taste like seafood. Manuel Kahlhammer grows wonderful, fine mushrooms.

Creative team: Peter, David and Beate are the faces of KühbreinMost.

transferred into temperaturecontrolled stainless steel barrels, where it can ferment and mature in peace. Modern cellar technology is needed to truly transfer the character of the apple varieties into the glass. The same technique is used as when producing fine white wines. This has made it possible to transform the former farmer’s drink into a premium product.

“The fact that our cider was named the World’s Best Sparkling Cider at the 2020 World Cider Awards in Norwich, England, was a fantastic affirmation of our work”, says David Kargl.

The judges were impressed with the fruity nose of peach and elder blossom as well as the long-lasting taste on the palate. “Cider is a door opener. Young people in particular love the product and may also like to try apple wine”, says Kargl.

The company’s cider is made from apple wine that is blended with apple juice and carbonated.

This transfers the pure apple taste into the glass. kuehbreinmost.at

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“Mushrooms are a food for the future”, says Manuel Kahlhammer. “We eat too much meat – mushrooms are a tasty alternative.”

Manuel Kahlhammer harvests 150 kilos in the Upper Murtal district every week. His mushroom factory specialises in exotic, fine varieties such as shiitake or oyster mushrooms. Kahlhammer is passionate about mushrooms that look like works of art – and don’t taste like conventional mushrooms either. The lion’s mane mushroom, for example, is also known as the mountain-priest mushroom or bearded tooth fungus. “I think it looks like a cauliflower that grows on a tree”, says the mushroom expert. “And it has a slightly seafood-like taste.”

Kahlhammer primarily sells his unusual crops at regional farmers’ markets, where he really does astonish people with them.

Kräuterseitlinge und Shiitake aus heimischer Produktion

Manuel Kahlhammer cleans his mushrooms after the harvest – everything is done by hand in the factory.

INNOVATOR

I N N O V AT O R One of his favourites is the Pioppino, also known as the Black Poplar mushroom. This has long been considered a delicacy in France and Italy and is also grown in Japan. “Its intense woody flavour is reminiscent of that of sweet chestnuts”, enthuses the mushroom farmer.

The mushrooms are also used to make pesto, tomato sauce, ribbon noodles, risotto and spreads, and are sold in organic farm shops and delicatessens. diepilzmanufaktur.at

V EGETABLES

A spa for tomatoes, radishes and co.

Manfred Hohensinner’s tomatoes flourish thanks to Styrian thermal water.

GENUSSREICH FREILICHTMOMENTE, GRUNDNERS PILZMANUFAKTUR/SABRINA STUMMER, PHILIP PLATZER

While working as a lorry driver, Manfred Hohensinner had the best idea of his life: the Frutura founder uses thermal water to heat his greenhouses.

A small farm that no-one could earn a living from: Manfred Hohensinner’s financial situation wasn’t exactly rosy. So he looked for a side job and travelled around Eastern Europe for eleven years as a lorry driver. Years that opened his eyes. “I saw the global dependencies and the devastating way we treat our environment”, he says.

There was one thought that he couldn’t let go of: it had to be possible to grow fruit and vegetables in a climate-friendly manner without having to transport them half way around the world. Twenty years ago, he teamed up with two other farmers to jointly establish the company group Frutura. But Hohensinner also hit upon another ingenious idea during his long motorway journeys. “I’m someone who has pretty simple thoughts”, says the

INNOVATOR

58-year-old. “We live in one of the most beautiful thermal regions in Austria, so why we don’t use the water to heat our vegetables?”

At first, he was laughed at.

And it goes without saying that pumping the thermal water out of the earth was technically complex.

Machines had to drill 3,500 metres down. But it worked. Today, tomatoes, radishes and co. enjoy spa conditions – and no thermal water is lost like with thermal baths: “We return the water and Mother Earth heats it up again. It’s a perfect circular economy.”

His three children have also joined the family business now too.

There’s no need for any of them to become long-distance lorry drivers. frutura.com

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Tastes good and feels good!

Would you like to take some time off? In Steiermark, people consciously make time for the important things: their produce is in harmony with nature and they prepare it with a lot of dedication and love. And that, you can taste from glacier to wine.

© Steiermark Tourismus | Wolfgang Jauk

www.steiermark.com

GUIDE

I N N O V AT O R

LET THERE BE LIGHT!

Graz – a city that shines brightly

27 ALEX KOCH

to 30 October Klanglicht festival When autumn arrives, the days grow shorter. To soften the blow of bidding farewell to summer, Graz becomes a stage of light and sound. Renowned artists from all over the world create magical light installations that use colours and music to create different atmospheres. klanglicht.at

INNOVATOR

A fascinating sight: impressive light installations await us

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On route to new solutions: discussions will also be held in the Stadthalle Graz event hall.

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and 10 June Fifteen Seconds festival We’ve got enough problems at the moment, so let’s tackle them!

Each year, the Fifteen Seconds festival in Graz brings together intelligent minds to develop creative solutions that make our world a better place: 48 hours of inspiration, knowledge transfer and networking.

Various locations, Graz; fifteenseconds.co/festival

With over 130,000 visitors, the Aufsteirern festival in Graz is the country’s largest folk culture event, providing direct insights into just how diverse folk dance and folk music can be – from traditional groups to obscure crossover projects. The festival takes over the entire city centre. There’s also a craft mile, the ‘2 linke Fiaß’ (‘2 left feet’) dance arena, a choir stage and a children’s area ‘Kind & Kegel’ (‘kith & kin’).

22

June Future day of the Styrian economy Access to resources is often unfairly distributed.

And ‘access’ is a key term when we’re thinking about the future. Who is involved?

How can we ensure that everyone has future prospects, that we can all live on an equal footing? Experts will discuss these matters on the Zukunftstag der steirischen Wirtschaft (‘Future day of the Styrian economy’).

Messecongress Graz; zukunftstag.st

aufsteirern.at

15

to 19 June Spring festival We’re finally able to dance the night away together again! The Graz Springfestival (‘spring festival’) is a reliable partner when it comes to combining a cool mix of acts from the local electronic scene with popular international ones. For five days and four nights, the entire city will transform into a stage for music, design and art. The techno DJ Chris Liebing will open the festival with a performance in the Dom im Berg.

Various locations, Graz; springfestival.at

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INNOVATOR

FIFTEEN SECONDS/DOMINIC ERSCHEN, DANIEL KINDLER

17

and 18 September Aufsteirern festival

Styria.

A Land of

s t n e l a T

> 82,000 companies that are potential business partners or employers

> 5,000

600

> 15,000

5.15 %

companies that offer first class training for skilled workers

apprentices make up the next generation of skilled workers that will tackle the challenges of tomorrow

business- and university-operated research facilities provide an innovative environment

research ratio – this top score in Europe generates some 500 patents per year

1

contact for all business-related questions: the Styrian Chamber of Commerce WKO All information at: wko.at/stmk

Styria. A Land of Talents. In research and development. And when it comes to skilled workers.

Dual training in more than 5,000 companies makes sure of that. An optimal infrastructure and an environment open for investment provide the icing on the cake.

Styria. Quality of life. Pristine nature and limitless leisure activities. Diverse culture and great food. Working and living in Austrians’ most popular holiday destination. © Photo credits: dieindustrie.at/Mathias Kniepeiss

GUIDE

7

S A V E T H E D AT E May to 12 June Graz Design Month Even in the field of design, sustainability is becoming ever more important.This year’s Designmonat Graz (‘Graz Design Month’) will focus on the question of how the creative sector can help progress the green transition. In this regard, the role of the designer is also changing: the individual will take a back seat in favour of the community. New forms of cooperation are needed. Lectures, exhibitions and workshops will provide creative input. The festival will take place all over the city.

Various locations, Graz; designmonat.at

20

May Long night of research How does beaming work?

What are the consequences of climate change? How does the circular economy work?

Questions like these will be answered at the Lange Nacht der Forschung (‘long night of research’). 25,000 interested people recently attended locations in the Graz, Leoben and Kapfenberg regions to discover what scientists are currently racking their brains about.

Various locations in Styria; langenachtderforschung.at

Bright, three-legged stools and tables in an array of colours convey stability.

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June Grazathlon

Start and finish: Augarten event arena; beatthecity.at/egrazathlon/

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A spectacular obstacle course through the centre of the city – Grazathlon participants have to complete an over 10-kilometre course with more than 20 obstacles! In 2021, the strength-zapping hurdles wer given mysterious names like the ‘duck pond’, ‘bear slope’ or ‘sofa corner’. In the case of obstacle number ten – ‘Mind the step!’ – the reason for the name was clear: participants had to climb the 260 steps to the top of the Schlossberg. This year’s Grazathlon will be equally as strenuous.

It starts at 2 p.m.

Coming in to land: a participant on last year’s bagjump

INNOVATOR

PROMOTION

Plenty of space to relax: only 20 percent of Leoben is built-up. Forests and meadows make up the rest.

[1] KNAPP Logistics projects around the globe are handled from here.

THE GREEN HEART OF UPPER STYRIA

[2] RHI MAGNESITA The global leader in refractories.

[3] LIVE CONGRESS The new convention centre was opened in early March.

[4] MONTANUNIVERSITÄT Students from more than 80 nations come together here to learn and research. New courses deal with topics such as the latest climate-friendly technologies.

[5] GÖSSER Beer culture steeped in over a thousand years of history.

[6] MAYR-MELNHOF HOLZ The group’s head office has been based in Leoben for decades. Now, a new cross-laminated timber plant is being built here too.

FOTO FREISINGER

[7] AT&S The Austrian high-tech company is continuing to expand in Leoben. It is investing 500 million euros into its new research centre, which will create 700 new jobs.

[8] VOESTALPINE This is where the longest track in the world is produced. The new focus is on environmentally friendly technologies for the production of steel.

Why is Leoben such a fertile breeding ground for high-tech companies? Perhaps because it also offers such great quality of life.

A technical university, pioneering companies, the forest and the Mur river: the many facets of life are all to be found in Leoben. There are few other places where cooperation between research and industry works as well as in the university city. Companies regularly invest hundreds of millions of euros and the number of jobs is growing rapidly. Those attracted to Leoben by the work opportunities enjoy plenty of other benefits too: modern living spaces are constantly being created and people can travel almost anywhere by bike.

As Leoben has long been an interna-

tional city, the bilingual education enjoyed by children will in future begin in nursery. The historic main square is a lively meeting place and home to the new event location Live Congress, which offers the perfect venue for cultural and business events.

Just outside the centre, local recreational areas are also blossoming thanks to innovatively designed green spaces, such as along the banks of the Mur. Urban life in the midst of nature – this is what modern quality of life looks like.

leoben.at

READ IT

A decla­ration of love to Styria Dietrich Mateschitz loves visiting home. He tells us what makes Styria so special.

An avowed Styrian And I’ll say it with pride. After all, and this is the way I always put it if someone asks me about my relationship with my home, I’m an avowed Styrian. There are many different ways to be a Styrian. Like Peter Rosegger, who has expressed his love of his home region in the simplest 96

Visits home Or like the many people I meet every time I visit home: the most hospitable hosts, the hardest working farmers, the most intelligent scientists, the most creative artists, the most ingenious engineers and the most honest workers. People who I take my hat off to, all of them.

And I’ve not yet even mentioned the feeling known only by those who have sat in a wine tavern overlooking the south-east Styrian hills while enjoying a plate of beetle bean salad with kernel oil and a glass of Muscatel.

INNOVATOR

BIRGIT BENDA

I

’ve been living in exile for many years. Don’t get me wrong; I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Salzburg is good to me. It’s an amazing city in which to base my life, a wonderful place to reside, somewhere that offers culture, mountains, lakes, everything I could want. But Salzburg isn’t my home. After all, you can only have only one home in your lifetime. And my home is Styria.

If someone asks me where I’m from, I’ll always tell them: I’m Styrian.

and therefore most apt words. Like Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is so Styrian that he even retains our dialect when speaking English. Like Jochen Rindt, the most casual superstar in the history of sport, and Thomas Muster, the most indomitable. Like Nikolaus Harnoncourt, who even made Mozart sound more like Mozart than the man himself, and Klaus Maria Brandauer, who people can be terrified of one minute and want to hug the next.

COLUMN

“If someone asks me where I’m from, I’ll always tell them: I’m Styrian.”

Archduke John syndrome You’ve probably already noticed that I find it hard to be objective when it come to Styria. People occasionally tell me I’ve got a kind of Archduke John syndrome.

But if they’re right in their diagnosis, there’s no other illness I’d prefer to have.

I hope you enjoy exploring my home region.

INNOVATOR

IMPRINT

Head of The Red Bulletin Alexander Müller-Macheck, Sara Car-Varming (dpty) Editors-in-Chief Andreas Rottenschlager, Andreas Wollinger (dpty) Copy Chief David Pesendorfer Editor of the Styrian Innovator Wolfgang Wieser Project Management Jennifer Silberschneider Creative Directors Kasimir Reimann, Erik Turek Art Directors Marion Bernert-Thomann, Miles English, Tara Thompson Graphic Design Birgit Benda, Martina de CarvalhoHutter, Kevin Faustmann-Goll, Cornelia Gleichweit Photo Editors Eva Kerschbaum (head), Marion Batty, Susie Forman, Tahira Mirza, Rudi Übelhör Digital Editors Christian Eberle-Abasolo (head), Lou Boyd, Marie-Maxime Dricot, Melissa Gordon, Lisa Hechenberger, Elena Rodriguez Angelina, Julian Vater Head of Audio Florian Obkircher Managing Editors Ulrich Corazza, Marion Lukas-Wildmann Publishing Management Melissa Stutz (head), Ivona Glibusic, Bernhard Schmied Managing Director Stefan Ebner Head of Media Sales & Partnerships Lukas Scharmbacher Head of Co-Publishing Susanne Degn-Pfleger Project Management Co-Publishing, B2B Marketing & Communication Katrin Sigl (head), Katrin Dollenz, Thomas Hammerschmied, Sophia Wahl, Teresa Kronreif (B2B), Eva Pech, Valentina Pierer, Stefan Portenkirchner Creative Services Verena Schörkhuber-Zöhrer (head), Sara Wonka, Tanja Zimmermann, Julia Bianca Zmek, Edith Zöchling-Marchart Commercial Management Co-Publishing Alexandra Ita Editorial Co-Publishing Raffael Fritz (head), Gundi Bittermann, Michael Hufnagl, Alexander Klein, Irene Olorode, Mariella Reithoffer, Wolfgang Wieser Executive Creative Director Markus Kietreiber Senior Manager Creative Elisabeth Kopanz Art Direction Commercial & Co-Publishing Peter Knehtl (head), Silvia Druml-Shams, Erwin ­Edtmayer, Simone Fischer, Martina Maier, Andreea Gschwandtner, Carina Schaittenberger, Alexandra Schendl, Julia Schinzel, Florian Solly, Sophie Weidinger, Stephan Zenz Head of Direct to Consumer Business Peter Schiffer Direct to Consumer Business Marija Althajm, Victoria Schwärzler, Yoldaş Yarar (subscriptions) Retail & Special Projects Manager Klaus Pleninger Advertising Manuela Brandstätter, Monika Spitaler Manufacturing & Production Veronika Felder (head), Martin Brandhofer, Walter O. Sádaba, Sabine Wessig Repro Clemens Ragotzky (head), Claudia Heis, Nenad Isailovic, Sandra Maiko Krutz, Josef Mühlbacher Finance Mariia Gerutska (head), Elisabeth Maier MIT Christoph Kocsisek, Michael Thaler IT Service Desk Maximilian Auerbach Operations Alice Gafitanu, Melanie Grasserbauer, Alexander Peham, Thomas Platzer, Raphaela Pucher Project Management Dominik Debriacher Assistant to General Management Sandra Artacker Publisher & Managing Director of Red Bull Media House Publishing Andreas Kornhofer Editorial office Am Grünen Prater 3, A-1020 Vienna Telephone +43 1 90221-0 Website redbulletin.com Published by Red Bull Media House GmbH, Oberst-Lepperdinger-Straße 11–15, A-5071 Wals bei Salzburg, commercial register no. 297115i, Salzburg district court, ATU63611700 Executive Directors Dietrich Mateschitz, Dietmar Otti, Christopher Reindl, Marcus Weber

INNOVATOR BY THE RED BULLETIN Austria, ISSN 1995-8838 Country Editor Nina Kaltenböck Country Project Management Bernhard Schmied Proofreading Hans Fleißner (head), Petra Hannert, Monika Hasleder, Billy Kirnbauer-Walek, Belinda Mautner, Klaus Peham, Vera Pink Translations De Vries Translations Media Sales & Partnerships Thomas Hutterer (head), Michael Baidinger, Franz Fellner, Ines Gruber, Wolfgang Kröll, Gabriele Matijevic-Beisteiner, Alfred Vrej Minassian, Nicole Okasek-Lang, Britta Pucher, Jennifer Sabejew, Johannes Wahrmann-Schär, Ellen Wittmann-Sochor, Ute Wolker, Christian Wörndle, Sabine Zölß Sales Operations & Development Anna Schönauer (head), David Mühlbacher Disclosure in accordance with Section 25 of the Mediengesetz (‘Media Act’) Information about the media owner can be permanently and directly found at the following web address: redbull.com/im/de_AT Contact redaktion@at.redbulletin.com

INNOVATOR BY THE RED BULLETIN Germany, ISSN 2079-4258 Country Editor Maximilian Reich Country Project Management Nina Hahn Proofreading See the corresponding entry under Austria Media Sales & Partnerships Thomas Hutterer (head), Michael Baidinger, Franz Fellner, Ines Gruber, Wolfgang Kröll, Gabriele Matijevic-Beisteiner, Alfred Vrej Minassian, Nicole Okasek-Lang, Britta Pucher, Jennifer Sabejew, Johannes Wahrmann-Schär, Ellen Wittmann-Sochor, Ute Wolker, Christian Wörndle, Sabine Zölß

INNOVATOR BY THE RED BULLETIN Switzerland, ISSN 2308-5886 Country Editor Stefania Telesca Country Project Management Melissa Stutz Proofreading See the corresponding entry under Austria Media Sales & Brand Partnerships Christian Bürgi (head), christian.buergi@redbull.com Marcel Bannwart, marcel.bannwart@redbull.com Jessica Pünchera, jessica.puenchera@redbull.com Goldbach Publishing, Marco Nicoli, marco.nicoli@goldbach.com

In cooperation with Steirische Tourismus und Standortmarketing GmbH - STG

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Heading into space: from Graz to Jupiter Mission icy moons: searching for signs of life.

When the ESA launches its JUICE mission in 2023 and sets out to explore our outer solar system, a scientific instrument from Graz will be on board. “The quantum interference magnetometer will be used to explore the oceans beneath the icy surface of the moons of Jupiter”, says Werner Magnes of the Space Research Institute (IWF) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (OEAW) in Graz. It will take the

spacecraft twelve years to reach the moons of Jupiter (80 of which are known to date), where temperatures can be as low as minus 160 degrees Celsius.

This is a major stress test for the space probe, which has an important mission: to determine whether there are any life-like structures in these oceans. oeaw.ac.at

NASA/JPL/DLR, AIRBUS/ MATHIAS PIKELJ

KARIN CERNY

Europa, Ganymed and Kallisto, Jupiter’s moons II, III and IV, have huge oceans beneath their surfaces. A scientific instrument from Graz aims to explore them.

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INNOVATOR

(c) RNPD.com. Photos: Mathias Kniepeiss, Steiermark Tourismus/icarus.cc (3x), Harry Schiffer, www.adobestock.com

Who produces almost 1/4 of the green electricity generated worldwide with their expertise and technologies? Who ensures that you can pay contactless and that the door is open to racing success? Who puts the ‘smart’ in smartphones? And who saves 750 megatonnes of CO2 emissions globally every year thanks to technology?

The industrial companies of Styria and their 118,000 employees.

And that’s just the beginning ... dieindustrie.at/zukunftsmacher