Friendship at NEXTCOMIC 2023

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NEXTCOMIC-Festival 2023 at the Ars Electronica Center
NEXTCOMIC

(Linz, March 13, 2023) This year’s NEXTCOMIC Festival will be devoted to stories and drawings about friendship from March 17 to April 9 at the Ars Electronica Center. Students of the Master School for Communication Design bring their comics to life with augmented reality.

The most important facts at a glance

NEXTCOMIC 2023

Friendship has many facets: Old, new and special alliances will be presented in selected comics as part of this year’s festival. Different concepts of friendship will come to light – close, distant, deep or superficial relationships that function spatially close or over a long distance.

Bringing comics to life

In cooperation with the Master School for Communication Design Linz (MKD), comics will be brought to life in the foyer of the Ars Electronica Center by means of augmented reality. With the help of the app Artivive, the drawn works literally leap from the comic pages into reality. This time, the MKD students created comics under the title “Meet me Meta” – a reference to the slang phrase “meet me later”. The NEXTCOMIC exhibition in the foyer of the Ars Electronica Center can be visited from March 17 to April 9 with free admission. On Monday, March 20 at 6:00 p.m., the students will present their projects in Deep Space 8K.

Master School for Communication Design Linz

In a one-year in-depth training program in graphic and communication design, the Master School for Communication Design at HTL1 Bau und Design in Linz offers graduates of the higher department and the college of HTL1 as well as of related institutions the opportunity to perfect design skills, to explore individual abilities and to get to know teamwork and technical processes. Independent, process-oriented work in project teams characterizes the year at the master school.

The NEXTCOMIC Festival

The NEXTCOMIC Festival has been held in Linz (and Upper Austria) year after year since 2009. It is the only event of its kind in Austria and is one of the most important German-language comic festivals ever. One of its main concerns is to promote the Austrian comics scene. In addition to numerous exhibitions, the festival offers readings, animated films, workshops, comic games, a comic book exchange, Nightlines, a two-day online comic symposium and much more. Like other institutions, the Ars Electronica Center is a longtime partner of the NEXTCOMIC festival.

NEXTCOMIC Festival / Foto: Ars Electronica / Robert Bauernhansl

NEXTCOMIC Festival / Foto: Ars Electronica / Robert Bauernhansl

NEXTCOMIC Festival / Foto: Ars Electronica / Robert Bauernhansl