Denise Hirtenfelder
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Open Futurelab 2025
Participate @ Ars Electronica Festival
At the Ars Electronica Festival 2025 from September 3 to 7, 2025, in Linz, Austria, the Futurelab invited the audience to the Open Futurelab, Deep Space 8K, and the popular Futurelab Night. Festival visitors experienced the lab’s latest works and could also actively participate in its research.
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Alter.Ego
How Do AI Personalities Affect Us?
Flashing lights, whirring motors, and cheerful chimes – at first glance, Alter.Ego looks like an ordinary arcade game. Yet instead of controlling a joystick to win a prize, players must engage in dialogue with one of its shifting AI personalities and persuade it to cooperate.
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Citizen Manifesto
Societal Dialogue Aided by AI
Citizen Manifesto is an interactive installation that transforms future visions in uncertain times into posters, culminating in a diverse and vibrant collective manifesto. The project showcases how the transparent use of generative AI can support personal expression and civic dialogue.
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Art Thinking Lounge 2025
Future Citizen Kit for New Visions
The Art Thinking Lounge invites visitors to engage with Art Thinking as a creative mindset to navigate contemporary societal challenges. In 2025, it offered a set of interactive tools under the curatorial framework of “Future Citizen Kit”: designed to broaden perspectives, experiment with new visions of the future, and spark meaningful conversations.
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Beyond Curiosity
Explore the City with Gaussian Splatting
Beyond Curiosity is a participatory virtual tour of UNESCO City of Media Arts Linz that employs cutting-edge 3D Gaussian Splatting. The key highlight: visitors and residents of Linz can utilize the technology to explore the city in a new way and share their perspectives with the world.
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Melt This!
Radical Dialog on Glacial Melting
Schmilz, schmilz, Baby! / Melt This! is a thought-provoking campaign on glacier retreat by the activist artist group Aggro Climate, members of the Ars Electronica Futurelab. The initiative is one of the two winning projects of the Ars Electronica Futurelab 2024 internal ideas competition Ideas Expedition.
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Open Futurelab 2024
Shaping HOPE @ Ars Electronica Festival
We at the Ars Electronica Futurelab understand HOPE – motto of the Ars Electronica Festival 2024 – as a process that can be shaped through art and active participation. We therefore invited everyone to shape HOPE together: from September 4 to 8, 2024, at the Open Futurelab in POSTCITY at the Ars Electronica Festival.
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Collective Transformation Lab
Engaging Strategies for Social Challenges
“Think slow, act fast” is the mantra of the Collective Transformation Lab – an enlightening self-reflection platform established as a collaboration between tech start-up Godot and the Ars Electronica Futurelab.
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Art for Transformation
Collective Creativity for Tokyo’s Future
Visitors were invited to a three-day series of activities in Tokyo in November 2024 under the motto Art for Transformation, highlighting the transformative potential of public engagement, creativity, and technological exploration.
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Buzz Swatters
Playful Pandemic Prevention
Buzzing noises, an inconspicuous window, tropical humidity, and the impression of being chased: Buzz Swatters: Playful Pandemic Prevention addresses the collective action problem of infectious diseases in an innovative and playful way.
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FOUNDING LAB Fall Term
New Formats for Future Universities
The FOUNDING LAB Fall Term is a continuation of the FOUNDING LAB collaboration between Austrian university IT:U and Ars Electronica, spanning September 2023 to January 2024. IT:U started its operation in 2023 with the FOUNDING LAB, supported by experts of Ars Electronica including a team of Ars Electronica Futurelab members.
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Bridge 2040
Intergenerational Game for Future Stories
Bridge 2040 is a card game in which children and senior citizens develop future narratives together, building a bridge between the generations. It has been expanded to be used in different settings such as innovation workshops and is now available in German, English, and Japanese.