SPAXELS rock in Rio - A test run near Linz

This years edition of the mega rock festival ROCK IN RIO will be the first to wow its audience with an illuminated swarm of drones. But before the Ars Electronica Spaxels® can enchant a one-million-plus of people between September 15th and 24th, a three-day marathon rehearsal was staged in Upper Austria over the last Week in March.

Réka Bucsi: "I like its playful ways"

Réka Bucsi’s animated short film “Symphony no. 42” got her shortlisted at the 87th Academy Awards. In April, she’ll be one of the 2017 Prix Ars Electronica jurors selecting this year’s Golden Nica recipients.

Flow: A Sea of Real-time Data

The water comes in; the water goes out. Since time immemorial, human beings have been fascinated by the sea. Artist Mathieu Le Sourd alias maotik has captured its motions and translated them into a walk-through interactive visualization in Deep Space.

Scalar Fields – Each step has an Importance

“Scalar Fields” visualizes the pressure field around the soles of shoes. By using the fluid simulation software developed by the artist, the propagation of pressure in air is visualized in 8K video. During the Ars Electronica Festival 2016, the visualization can be seen as floor and wall projection at Deep Space 8K with a marvelous sound experience.

DRONE 100 - Spaxels Over Linz: Test Flight in the Mühlviertel

“DRONE 100 –Spaxels over Linz” is the title of a spectacular quadcopter swarm performance that Ars Electronica and Intel are staging on September 10th, 2016. Before the 100 drones make their European public debut above the Danube they’ll be subjected to a rigorous physical exam. The first two test flights already took place this week—the quadcopters lifted off from a secluded field in Mühlviertel, the rural area north of Linz, and put on quite a show (that not too many people got to see).

DRONE 100 in Linz: A Behind-the-Scenes Look

This will be the first public appearance in Europe of the world’s largest autonomous drone swarm. Just before the Visualisierte Klangwolke in September 2016, the Ars Electronica Futurelab’s 100 Spaxels will display their aerial artistry in Linz. Here, Chris Bruckmayr and Andreas Jalsovec of the Spaxels crew talk about all the preparations and work that goes into such a performance.

Rhizome: Everything Is Interconnected

We zoom into a world that’s incessantly in motion, one in which everything is connected to everything else and the figures are constantly morphing. This animated film by Boris Labbé has been singled out for recognition with a Golden Nica by the 2016 Prix Ars Electronica.

Space Painting in Deep Space 8K

On Saturday the workshop “Tagtool” took place in the Ars Electronica Center as part of the Deep-Space-Weekend: UNESCO City of Media Arts. With a beamer, imagination and the app "Tagtool" participants transformed animations into projections and awakened digital paintings to life. In Deep Space 8K as workshop space this application takes on a whole new dimension.

MAXON: "Creativity engenders visual trends"

MAXON, a Germany-based software developer, has been creating 3-D graphic tools since the mid-1980s. Cinema 4D is one of them. In association with Maxon, the Ars Electronica Animation Festival will showcase prizewinning works of computer animation in September 2016.

Flame: Fiery Encounter in the Sign of Power

With last year’s topic of the EU project „Connecting Cities“, the focus was on making the invisible visible. In the course of the 2015 edition of the Ars Electronica Festival, the subject-matter "In/Visible City“ was impressively staged via a media installation called “Flame” by the artists Tamer Aslan and Onur Sönmez. With this interview, you get an afterglow of an issue that is still burning.

Bär
"Animation is like cooking"

You need to know how to balance the flavours. Mari-Liis Rebane, a juror in the 2016 Prix Ars Electronica’s Computer Animation / Film / VFX category, recently talked to us about the ingredients that go into an animated film that makes for tasty viewing.

Lightpainting with KUKA robot
Light Painting - As If Rendered by a Robot

Chris Noelle has come up with a wrinkle that takes the photographic technique of light painting to the next level! He uses the precision and speed of an industrial robot to create “brushstrokes” of light in space.

Furnished Fluid - Making the invisible visible

By combining art and science Akira Wakita examines design classics from the 20th century. He has developed a software to visualize the airflows of objects and thus to move the product design of furniture in a new light.

Drone 100: A World Record with 100 Points

A spectacle produced by the Ars Electronica Futurelab for Intel has made it into the record books! In a performance showcased by a promotional film for the world-famous chip maker, 100 spaxels took to the sky simultaneously. Team spirit is what it took to get this ambitious demonstration of technical brilliance off the ground.

Video Mapping: Animations beyond the screen

Ferry wheels, historic buildings and cactuses - it does not always have to be a flat and limiting screen, where animations can be projected on, as shown in the video mappings by Romain Tardy.

"So I went the boring way"

2015 Golden Nica winner Alex Verhaest and Pascal Floerks, this year’s winner of an Award of Distinction, talked with jury member Erick Oh about their animations and motifs behind.

Expanded Animation - Tracking Developments on the Fringe

Media art in moving pictures will be a mainstay of the 2015 Ars Electronica Festival. For the first time, the Symposium “Expanded Animation”, the Prix Forum and the screenings of computer-animated works will be held at a single location.

Animated Films with Character

Animated films are his passion! Rob O’Neill, a 2015 Prix Ars Electronica juror and character technical director supervisor at DreamWorks Animation, talks about current trends in character design and what filmmakers have to do to build up a portfolio that really makes people sit up and take notice.

Architecture in Motion

A real celebration of form and geometry—the terms that the 2014 Prix Ars Electronica jury used to describe the animated film entitled “Walking City” couldn’t have been more apt. An interview with Matt Pyke, creative director of Universal Everything, the studio that took home a Golden Nica for their efforts.

Ars Electronica Animation Festival 2014

The Ars Electronica Animation Festival showcases the outstanding creative work filmmakers are currently doing in very diverse areas in the animation field - applications in art, science, R&D and industry.

Animated Films that Move Us

Animated films have to touch people and speak to their needs. Jurors Sabine Hirtes and Joe Gerhardt talk about what actually characterizes good animation and which trends can currently be observed in this field.

Animation is more than just film

What defines a good animation? And what developments can be expected in this area? Prof. (FH) Mag. Dr. Jürgen Hagler Mag from the Upper Austrian University of Applied Sciences Campus Hagenberg presents a brief inventory of the genre and introduces the animations that can be seen at Deep Space LIVE on THU March 20, 2014, 8 PM.

Christine Schöpf und Jürgen Hagler zum Animation Festival

The Ars Electronica Blog recently published an interview with Christine Schöpf and Jürgen Hagler about the Prix and computer animation. In this installment, they discuss the Animation Festival.

First Submission Computer Animation 2013

u19 and Animations