Digital Musics & Sound Art

Polychoros - Night Performances
Human and virtual dancer in a duet of self-realization: an expressive dance performance in Deep Space 8K.

\a.ni.i.la.sjɔ̃\ [annihilation] - Night Performances
When humans and industry threaten the planet: a dystopian performance as an immersive experience in Deep Space 8K.

SonoSynthesis - Night Performances
Humans, AI and microorganisms compose together: SonoSynthesis presents a hybrid future of art at its world premiere.

Plan B Day: Creating Future Together
The Saturday of the festival awaits you with numerous inspirations for jointly taking steps towards a future in which we meet inevitable challenges as a global community.

STARTS Day: Artistic Innovation and Musical Visions
What are the highlights of the Friday of the Ars Electronica Festival? We'll give you some interesting insights into the packed program.

Opening Day: Highlights and Insights
The first day of the Ars Electronica Festival awaits you with exciting performances and lots of art, technology and new inspirations.

Man-Machine Music: A Classic of the Future?
Forward-looking prelude to Ingolstadt Science Congress with AI compositions of the Ars Electronica Futurelab co-performed by the Georgian Chamber Orchestra.

Holly+: Come and sing like Holly Herndon!
"It takes a village to create something special" and Holly Herndon and her team have succeeded in doing just that. In the interview, she presents her machine learning project in more detail, for which she has now received the European Commission's STARTS Prize 2022.

Circular Records for Circular Futures
Can records be made from biomaterials? Artists Kat Austen and Fara Peluso think so and will work on developing a low-carbon alternative to vinyl during their S+T+ARTS Residency.

Origami, robotics and a new world of music
How do origami and robotics create music? The Ars Electronica Futurelab's new video presents the world of oribotic instruments.

Morphologies – Digital Formations and Analog Music
Analog music generates digital visualizations: Maki Namekawa, Cori O'Lan and Rubin Kodheli in a timeless night performance at Deep Space 8K.

11°22'4''142°35'5'' – Noise and Visuals in Deep Space 8K
Accordion Noise and Visual Performance 11°22'4''142°35'5'' took us down to the deepest point of the Mariana Trench as part of the Ars Electronica Futurelab's Night Performances in Deep Space 8K.

Throwback: Linz Steel Symphony
In 1980, electronic music pioneer Klaus Schulze opened the Ars Electronica Festival with a concert of live recorded sounds from the Linz steelworks voestalpine.

[ˈdaːzaɪn] – Audiovisual Performance
Embedded in a technical, symbolic and metaphysical universe, the audiovisual performance [ˈdaːzaɪn] by media artists Arno Deutschbauer and Micha Elias Pichlkastner alias "Sective" immersed the packed Deep Space 8K in a reloaded atmosphere.

Und Ja, And Yes
Trombonist Werner Puntigam, guitarist Beat Keller and percussionist Georg Wilbertz have come together at the Ars Electronica Center to present their freely improvised chamber music miniatures.

Temazcal – The art of percussion
An acoustic, visual and digital interpretation of Javier Alvarez's "Temazcal" for maracas by percussion artist Elliott Gaston-Ross to live visuals by Florian Berger.

Sounding Letters – AI and human intelligence in concert
There have been many attempts to express music in words. But what happens when you transform a sequence of letters into music with the help of Artificial Intelligence?

Creative (Artificial) Intelligence
What differentiates analog from digitally generated work?

Nocturne 2021: the Pandemic on big screen.
An extraordinary artwork, created in an extraordinary period. Nocturne brings the time of the Pandemic in the Deep Space 8K.

At the Pulse of Time
In 1987, the Prix Ars Electronica, one of the world's most important competitions for media art, was launched. Every year at the Ars Electronica Festival, the best works can be admired in the CyberArts exhibition. This year, again.

Classical Music: Composed by AI, Played by Humans
It sounds paradoxical, but what would happen if artificial intelligence writes the notes for us and we only take on the role of musicians?

He lets mini-robots make music
An interview with this year's EMAP Residency Artist: Moritz Simon Geist!

Who was Isao Tomita?
He not only laid the foundations of the synthesizer boom, but also pushed boundaries and influenced numerous sound artists.

About disappearance
In 2020, Wolfgang Fadi Dorninger receives the City of Linz's Art Appreciation Award in the category of Media, Product and Communication Design and defy the event-free times with a performance on December 1 in the Ars Electronica Center's Deep Space 8K that will be broadcast on Home Delivery. A different kind of awards ceremony.

Artificial compositions and machine-made music - The AIxMusic Festival 2020
Music and technology, artificial intelligence and musical instruments, discussion panels and workshops. One term unites all these elements in one: The AIxMusic Festival!

Digital Data in major and minor
Can machines create? As a key researcher and artist on the subject of Creative Intelligence at the Ars Electronica Futurelab, he has been dealing with this question since many years. The algorithm is in his blood, Ali Nikrang is an expert in artificial intelligence and music.

Of rhythms and algorithms
They promise a future full of convenience and are said to surpass us humans in every respect quite soon. Artificial intelligence is already way ahead of us in many areas of competence. Just a few years ago, we thought that it was human creativity alone that distinguished the analogue from the digitally generated work. Because Mahler and Chopin cannot be replaced by algorithms. Or, can they?

How to compose with MuseNet a piece of music in the style of Mozart
We tried for you how to compose music with the Deep Neural Network "MuseNet" from OpenAI and made a step-by-step guide based on it. If you want to learn more about composing music using AI, you should visit the Open Soundstudio at the Ars Electronica Center and participate in the "MuseNet Special" workshop.

AI, Music and the Change of the Audience
Hugues Vinet, head of research activities at IRCAM, told us in an interview how the world's largest research centre dedicated to both musical expression and scientific research works, why AI has social relevance and what role he and his team will play at the festival.

Mahler-Unfinished: When man and machine make music
At the 2019 Ars Electronica Festival, the tenth symphony by Gustav Mahler will be performed at the Big Concert Night (FRI, Sept. 6). Why this is extraordinary? The composer never finished it - together with an artificially intelligent algorithm, Ali Nikrang, Key Researcher at the Ars Electronica Futurelab, has now completed the piece. In an interview, he and Markus Poschner, chief conductor of the Bruckner Orchestra, tell us more.