The Ars Electronica features present a symbiotic blend of art and technology, meticulously curated in collaboration with partner institutions to showcase innovative programs and perspectives that inspire global change. Since their inception as the Ars Electronica Festival Gardens in 2020, the decentralized festival platform has evolved, adapting to the constraints imposed by the pandemic and transforming into a vital program of the festival. This year, the festival proudly invites a selection of partners to present their projects under the new title “Ars Electronica features.”
Emerging from the necessity to navigate international travel restrictions, the Festival Gardens provided a decentralized platform from 2020 to 2022. This allowed partner institutions worldwide to host local programs while maintaining international connectivity. As travel and physical participation resumed, the festival saw a significant increase in physical attendance, with 29 partners joining in Linz last year. This evolution from Gardens to Features marks a pivotal moment in the festival’s approach to presenting partner projects.
Future Morphoid / TECHARTGROUP INC (TW), FEASTOGETHER CORPORATION (TW), Photo: TECHARTGROUP INC
Efficiency of Mutualism / Dorita Takido (JP), Photo: Ziyuan Jiang
Kerosene Chronicles. Fungus / Where Dogs Run (RU, SL): Natalia Grekhova, Olga Inozemtseva, Alexey Korzukhin, Photo: Where Dogs Run
The transition to Ars Electronica features signifies a renewed focus on the core essence of the festival. This curated selection highlights projects that resonate with the festival’s theme, ensuring both quality and thematic coherence.
The 2024 festival aims to engage an array of international partner institutions, selected through an open call evaluated by a jury of Ars Electronica experts. This year’s theme, “HOPE—who will turn the tide,” played a crucial role in the selection process, emphasizing the artists’ creative potential as agents of change. The chosen projects embody various facets of hope, demonstrating the resilience and strength of an international network converging in Linz.
Notable partner institutions include BeFantastic, NewArt { foundation;}, Jiabao Li representing the University of Texas at Austin, Baltan Laboratories, V2_ Lab for the Unstable Media, The Metaverse Alliance from Taiwan, Kapelica Gallery, the REX|LAB and the Yasuaki Kakehi Laboratory. These collaborations exemplify the festival’s commitment to presenting diverse, high-quality projects that explore the theme of hope from multiple perspectives.
The festival underscores the significance of diverse perspectives, with each partner contributing unique interpretations of “Hope.” This collaborative effort highlights the festival’s role as a platform for active exchange and inspiration, fostering new connections and innovative programs. Ars Electronica 2024 aspires to cultivate a global community that generates hope and drives change through creative collaboration and cutting-edge projects.
POSTCITY
WED Sept. 4 – SUN Sept. 8, 2024
Admission with FESTIVALPASS+, FESTIVALPASS, DAYPASS, POSTCITY Ticket
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Changing Environments
BUCHAREST | NEOART Association/Galateca Gallery (RO)
Changing Environments is the curatorial and research theme of the exhibition. Through two interactive installations, it explores the impact we feel on an individual and community level caused by excessive use of technology, environmental destruction or unseen realities owing to the speed of scrolling. The selected artists—Sebastian Comănescu and Marina Oprea —are two of the…
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CODE 2024
UTRECHT | IMPAKT / Werktank (NL)
CODE 2024: Reclaiming Digital Agency tackles urgent digital issues, from the Right to be Forgotten and Deep Nudes to AI opacity and digital identity. This exhibition aims to encourage audiences and policymakers to safeguard our digital rights and curb big tech’s power. Featuring artists from Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, CODE 2024 advocates for action…
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Electromagnetic Street Bon Dance Festival
Civic Creative Base Tokyo
Civic Creative Base Tokyo (CCBT) provides opportunities for creative talent to undertake new projects and makes those processes accessible to the public, facilitating forms of artistic expression, exploration and action that can change Tokyo for the better. ELECTRONICOS FANTASTICOS! creates a whirlwind of co-creation on a special stage powered by renewable energy!
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HOPE: Hybrid, Organic, Postplastic Environments
INNSBRUCK | Robotic Experimentation Lab (REX|LAB) at the Universität Innsbruck, Department of Experimental Architecture (Exp.Arch.), Hochbau, Studio Colletti
An example of 21st-century Postplasticism, the exhibition HOPE: Hybrid, Organic, Postplastic Environments showcases an experimental, sustainable and ecological approach to designing and manufacturing bespoke modular micro-living-working environments. Flexible, multifunctional furniture and storage solutions with integrated smart technologies are folded, stacked or nested in a 3D-printed domestic landscape that needs to fit inside the bounding box…
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Jiabao Li: Ecocentric Future Lab (US)
AUSTIN | Jiabao Li: Ecocentric Future Lab (US)
Run with mice, scream with bats, draw maps with a bobtail squid, talk like arctic foxes and move like polar bears. Jiabao Li’s exhibition probes non-human intelligence, helping us shift perspectives through co-creation with more-than-human entities.
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Resonance of Hope
TAIPEI | Metaverse Alliance (TW)
Resonance of Hope: Exploring Love, Technology, and Peace in Turbulent Times explores love, technology, and peace. Imagine integrates motion capture and real-time data to reflect on global conflicts. Future Morphoid immerses visitors in Taiwanese life contrasts through immersive installations. Heartbreak Funeral Service guides healing with AI, encouraging empathy and global harmony. This exhibition invites reflection…
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Summer Sessions at Ars Electronica Festival 2024
ROTTERDAM | V2_ Lab for the Unstable Media (NL)
The Summer Sessions pop-up exhibition at Ars Electronica Festival 2024 displays a selection of outcomes realized through the international exchange of emerging talents within the Summer Sessions network.
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Technologies Otherwise
EINDHOVEN | Baltan Laboratories (NL)
Let us restart and do technology otherwise: open it up, dissect its materials and rethink the narratives behind it. Let us think about how developing more diverse technologies could challenge our current one. The exhibition Technologies Otherwise presents three technological objects—battery, phone and third-party cookies—that represent intersections of economic, material, political and social interactions.
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Temporal Shifts: Along the Red Dot
SINGAPORE | BeFantastic (SG, IN)
Temporal Shifts: Along the Red Dot brings together four pioneering artists from the island nation of Singapore, as they present critical investigations and speculative imaginations that address the city-country’s relationship to land and natural resources—past, present and future. These artists construct digital environments built on personal archives, historical research and cultural traditions, reflecting upon Singapore’s…
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The Ripple effect
ENSCHEDE | Tetem (NL)
Through The Ripple effect, you will be able to come to terms with this: each action will have a reaction, and we can make the difference. Explore the essence of actions, relationships and decisions through interactive technologies that bring a new realm into our perspective. Sjoerd van Acker and Annika Kappner show you that each…
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Vestibular_1
REUS | .NewArt { foundation;} (ES)
VESTIBULAR_1 is an immersive audiovisual installation that induces illusory sensations of self-motion in complete darkness by disrupting vestibular functioning. Achieved via powerful light and sound patterns persisting in the retina and auditory system in darkness, the piece explores the role of vestibular signals in body and world perception and their impact on aesthetic preferences.
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Well-tangled
TOKYO | Yasuaki Kakehi Lab, The University of Tokyo (JP)
Well-tangled explores the process of skilfully combining diverse elements (entanglements) to create a state of harmony amidst chaotic relations. This theme transcends a human-centric perspective, listening to the inner voices of matter and unpredictable elements. Focusing on water, living organisms, and threads, we seek to discover a balanced state where different beings coexist.