After the successful launch of the Gwangyang – Linz Media Arts Exchange initiative in 2024, the collaboration continues in 2025 with an exhibition grant and a dual exhibition presented in both cities this fall.
Two artworks — Liminal Ring by Korean artist Jin Lee (KR/DE) and A Terrarium by Linz-based artist Till Schönwetter(DE/AT) —have been selected for presentation at Ars Electronica Festival Linz in from 3–7 September 2025 and Media Arts Festival in Gwangyang from October 22 – November 4, 2025.
Type: Festival Participation
Duration: October 22 – November 4, 2025 (in Gwangyang)
City, Country: Gwangyang, South Korea
Website: instagram.com/gwangyangmediaartsfestival
The 2025 Gwangyang International Media Arts Festival unfolds under the theme Cycloidal Creatures, reflecting on spirals of connection, circulation, and renewal amid overlapping ecological, social, and technological crises. This year’s festival presents works by Kohui, Jae-Eun Shin, and Youngjoo Jennifer Ryu, as well as the Gwangyang–Linz Media Arts grantees Jin Lee and Till Schönwetter, across industrial warehouses, public spaces, and cultural venues in Gwangyang.
Liminal Ring / Jin Lee (KR), photo: vog.photo
Liminal Ring / Jin Lee (KR), photo: Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture
Liminal Ring / Jin Lee (KR), photo: Ars Electronica / Martin Hieslmair
a terrarium / Till Schönwetter (DE), photo: tom mesic
a terrarium / Till Schönwetter (DE), photo: tom mesic
Alongside these exhibitions, performances, and forums, the Ars Electronica Animation Festival on Tour broadens the dialogue. Building on its partnership with the city of Linz—home of Ars Electronica—the festival reaffirms the sister-city bond between Gwangyang and Linz, positioning their shared histories and futures as fertile ground for artistic imagination and exchange.
Artworks
Jin Lee (KR)
Liminal Ring
Liminal Ring explores the human desire to impose order on natural chaos. The project investigates the tension between artificially controlled systems and the unpredictable complexity of nature. The installation features 384 precisely calibrated fans that generate laminar airflow rings—visualizing artificial, imperfect cycles in contrast to nature’s seamless circulations. These rings form shifting, ephemeral structures within a larger turbulent field, symbolizing both the beauty and futility of human intervention. Culturally and philosophically, the work draws from post-industrial attitudes toward nature, where technology is often seen as a tool for mastery. Scientifically, it references principles of fluid dynamics and chaos theory to question the limits of prediction and control. The project invites viewers to confront the arrogance of believing nature can be tamed, and to reflect on humanity’s precarious relationship with the systems we only partially understand.
Jin Lee is a Berlin-based media artist and art technician who creates interactive environments using computational systems and electronics. His work explores the boundary between order and chaos, revealing emergent behaviors within kinetic and digital systems. Drawing from nature and technology, he translates complex patterns into sensory experiences. His internationally-exhibited installations blur the line between the digital and organic.
https://www.instagram.com/ji.nl.ee/
https://www.jinlee.de/
Artwork Credits
Sponsored by: ZER01NE 2023 I Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture 2024
Till Schönwetter (DE)
a terrarium
a terrarium explores artificial life, survival, and collapse within a sealed environment. A projection maps an evolving simulation onto a miniature landscape, turning the terrarium into a living world. Visitors can read and influence the emerging narratives, sending “god prompts” to influence the system. Within, generative AI agents build shelters, cultivate land, and adapt to their surroundings. Their behavior is driven by a system inspired by Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behavior (Park et al., 2023), in which language-model cognition, memory, and reflection are combined to simulate believable planning and social dynamics. The environment evolves continuously, shaped by agent actions and external interventions. Referencing artificial life research, ecological experiments, god games, and AI alignment debates, the project reflects on control, consequence, and the strange familiarity of artificial struggle.
Till Schönwetter is a new media artist whose work spans technical systems and poetic structures, crafting playful, romantic critiques of technological inevitability. With a background in landscape painting, his practice moves across interaction, fiction, and systems thinking, folding digital tools into strange experiments, unruly interfaces, and speculative environments. His works tend to glitch, loop, or contradict themselves as systems and environments that misbehave just enough to stay alive.
https://beautifulweather.digital/
https://www.instagram.com/till.beautifulweather/
Artwork Credits
Based on Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behavior (Joon Sung Park et al.)
Partner
Gwangyang International Media Arts Festival
Gwangyang and Linz, both renowned steel cities, have built a dynamic partnership rooted in industrial, business, and economic collaboration. Since 2024, this alliance has expanded into Media Arts through a partnership with Ars Electronica, leading to the launch of the Gwangyang International Media Arts Festival and the Gwangyang–Linz Media Arts Exchange Grant. Following its successful inaugural edition in October 2024, the festival returns in 2025, further deepening cultural ties and fostering artistic exchange between these two vibrant cities.
Credits
This project is presented with the support of the City of Gwangyang, the City of Linz and the Ars Electronica Festival as a recipient of the 2025 Gwangyang-Linz Media Arts Exchange Grant.
