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That was the Ars Electronica Festival 2025
For five days, Linz once again became a meeting place for art, technology, and society—and POSTCITY served as a stage for encounters, experiments, and visions one last time.
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Rethinking the Future of Europe through Art and Culture
Art and culture are driving forces for a resilient Europe of the future. But real change can only come from collaboration—and it is precisely this collaboration that is at the heart of the Ars Electronica Festival 2025.
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Music by humans and machines
Waltzes with artificial intelligence, organ music with robotics, interactive performances, and club nights: the musical program of the Ars Electronica Festival 2025 opens up new realms of experience for its visitors.
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Democracy in Action, or: The Art of Resistance
Democracy thrives on resistance and participation. At the Ars Electronica Festival 2025, artistic projects will show how protest opens up new spaces, strengthens communities, and creates visions for a shared future.
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Clear the stage for theater & digital media
Theater has always been an art form that combines different media—today, this includes digital technologies. The Ars Electronica Festival 2025 showcases some of the most exciting examples.
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Organism in a state of emergency
“Organism and Excitable Chaos” combines sound sculpture, instrument, and kinetic experiment. The work explores how organic forms, unstable pipes, and a chaotic pendulum open up new possibilities for the interplay between material, sound, and audience.
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Who is shaping our digital future?
At the Ars Electronica Festival 2025, artistic works will question the power of global tech corporations, shed light on “surveillance capitalism,” and show how we can reclaim our role in an AI-driven world.
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The world lies between doors
Manuela Naveau, curator of the Kunstuni Campus at the Ars Electronica Festival and university professor of Critical Data / Interface Cultures, talks about noisy sliding doors on Linz’s main square—and what this installation has to do with Einstürzende Neubauten, Beyoncé, and Hannah Arendt.
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Ars Electronica – From festival to ecosystem
Launched in 1979 as a daring experiment, Ars Electronica has developed over 46 years into a global ecosystem—characterized by continuous change, collaborative thinking, and the ambition to actively shape the future.
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The role of art in times of change
Art transforms uncertainty into creative energy and opens up new perspectives on society and the future. The Ars Electronica Festival 2025 shows how artistic works reflect technological, social, and ecological upheavals.
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Cutting Edge: In step with control
In a new issue, Michaela Wimplinger presents a project that shows how fragile self-determination has become in a world controlled by technology.
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The 6th VH AWARD: A Dream That Wanders as If It Were Real
Dream of Walnut Palaces weaves history, Daoist philosophy, and AI imagery into a transformative space where alternative forms of knowledge emerge.
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Expanded 2025: Where animation comes to life
The 13th edition of Expanded focuses on scientific contributions from the fields of animation and interactive art. The emphasis is on innovative audiovisual forms of expression at the interface between art and technology.
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Who needs art in times like these?
Amid global crises and radical upheavals, the Ars Electronica Festival asks what role art can play—as a catalyst for new perspectives, as a space for reflection, and as a driving force for a collectively shaped future.
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Cutting Edge: Running against the virtual wall
In “Run Motherfucker Run,” the body becomes the controller: those who run experience virtual immersion—those who stop fall. A powerful critique of passive consumption in digital worlds.
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A Robot’s Liberation
Guanaquerx by Paula Gaetano Adi, winner in the Artificial Life & Intelligence category 2025, reclaims the Andes as a site of resistance and reimagines robotics as a tool for planetary liberation.
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Words as Weapons
Requiem for an Exit by Frode Oldereid and Thomas Kvam, winner of a 2025 Golden Nica, explores memory, violence, rhetoric, and the unsettling voice of a machine.
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Sound as a living process
This year’s Golden Nica in the category “Digital Musics & Sound Art” goes to media artist Navid Navab and Garnet Willis for their project “Organism.”
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Algorithm meets Goat Cheese
„Das Ziegenkäsemachen aus der Sicht der Ziege“ (Goat Cheese Making from the Perspective of the Goat) reveals the digital overload, the dependency on algorithms, and the longing for liberation. It is a film that understands art as a radical scream against mindless, endless media consumption and indifference.
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Stories of self-determination
The HEROINES project shows how citizens can help shape social change through research. In 2025, it was awarded the European Union Prize for Citizen Science.
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Wearing Change, Locally
What does a sustainable future in a big city look like? The Wild Future Lab in Nairobi showcases new paths for a renaturalized city through wearable, innovative artifacts made from local materials.
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A space with endless possibilities
SHARESPACE explores new forms of collaboration between people, avatars, and AI in hybrid spaces. The focus is on connection, participation, and creative interaction, accompanied artistically by Ars Electronica Futurelab. One space, infinite possibilities.
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Cutting Edge: Hands-on drone art
In this issue, Horst Hörtner presents a project that shows how art, technology, and participation can come together: the Klangwolke 2012, in which swarms of drones were used for the first time and thousands of people became part of the production.
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Art in the Quantum Age
The LAS Art Foundation’s Sensing Quantum project has been awarded the S+T+ARTS Grand Prize – Innovative Collaboration for its groundbreaking work in developing new pathways into quantum technology through immersive experiences and interdisciplinary collaboration.
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Tracing the Invisible Lines Between Devices and Drones
How closely are commercial AI systems entangled with military technology? Awarded the STARTS Prize 2025 Grand Prize –Artistic Exploration, this project reveals hidden connections.
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Between Inspiration and Loss of Control: Music in the Age of AI
Artificial Intelligence is changing how we perceive art. Projects such as the Waltz Symphony show how AI can enrich creative processes, as long as humans set the direction. But not everyone is convinced; some fear the loss of originality.
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Cutting Edge: Avatars of Humanity
“Cutting Edge” is a new blog series in which Ars Electronica team members present outstanding artistic projects. In the first edition, Gerfried Stocker introduces a project that shows how technology can create closeness: In the ‘Avatar Robot Café,’ people with severe physical disabilities are integrated into everyday working life via robots.
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Navigating Panic: Notes from Where Panic Becomes a Compass
As curator in residence of the ARKO-sponsored Curatorial Residency Program, Son Hyerim was on site during the jury weekend of the Prix Ars Electronica. In this guest article, she shares her personal reflections on this experience.