Prix Ars Electronica Exhibition 2024

• Press release as PDF
• HOPE – who will turn the tide
• Photos via Flickr & Best Of Ars Electronica Festival
• Ö1 podcast series on the Ars Electronica Festival
• Ars Electronica Blog: Interviews, background reports and photo stories

(Linz, September 2, 2024) “HOPE – who will turn the tide” is the theme of Ars Electronica 2024. This year, more than ever, the festival for art, technology and society will focus on people, projects and initiatives that give us hope despite all the crises. Not only because they make concrete proposals on how we can develop further as individuals and society. But because they embody everything that makes us confident that we can bring about necessary changes: creativity and (specialist) knowledge, openness and respect, the willingness to cooperate, courage. This will be tangible in the Prix Ars Electronica exhibition, an exclusive selection of the best media art projects of 2024.

Prix Ars Electronica: Around 90,700 submissions since 1987

The Prix Ars Electronica is the most important continuously held competition for digital art in the world. Launched in 1987, the Linz competition has received around 90,700 submissions to date. Its reputation does not come from awarding (another) prize to big names, but from tracking down new trends and bringing those artists in front of the curtain who will be on everyone’s lips tomorrow. Thousands of works are viewed every year and examined for the question of what occupies artists around the world, what methods and technologies (and with whom) they work (together).

Prix Ars Electronica: Platform for further competitions

The appeal of the Prix Ars Electronica is reflected not only in the number of submissions, but also in new collaborations and alliances. Over the years, the competition has become a sought-after platform for institutions and initiatives that—just like Ars Electronica—want to promote and use border crossings between different areas of our society.

In 2016, the S+T+ARTS Prize was the first major cooperation with the European Commission. In 2023, another joint prize followed with the European Union Prize for Citizen Science.

Two competitions are now also being held on the stage of the Prix Ars Electronica with the Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs: The Ars Electronica Award for Digital Humanity and State of the ART(ist), an initiative that honors artists who work at risk to life and limb.

Prix Ars Electronica 2024: Golden Nicas for Beatie Wolfe (GB), Diane Cescutti (FR) and Paul Trillo (US)

In 2024 alone, the Prix Ars Electronica recorded 2,950 submissions. The Golden Nica in the category “New Animation Art” was awarded to Beatie Wolfe (GB) for her animation Smoke and Mirrors, in the category “Interactive Art+” Diane Cescutti (FR) prevailed with her interactive installation Nosukaay. Among all submissions, the first “AI in Art Award” was also presented, which went to Paul Trillo (US) and his animation Washed Out “The Hardest Part” created with Sora, OpenAI’s text-to-video model. The Golden Nica in the Austria-wide category “u19–create your world” was won by 17-year-old Jakob Gruber for his remarkable animation Floods of Freedom on the deadly escape routes across the Mediterranean.

Prix Ars Electronica Exhibition at the Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz

A selection of these and other outstanding works can be experienced as part of the Prix Ars Electronica exhibition in Linz from September 4 to 8. The show comprises 13 projects and will be presented for the first time at the Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz. Other award-winning works as well as the prize-winning projects in the “u19–create your world” category can be seen at POSTCITY.

Guided tours with artists and curators

The Prix Ars Electronica exhibition at the Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz can be visited individually or as part of four different guided tours:

Wednesday, September 4, 2024, 1:00 p.m. to 2:30 p.m., Emiko Ogawa (Head of Prix Ars Electronica) invites you to the “Artist Tour: Interactive Art+”. The focus is on the multi-layered spectrum of interactive art, which is illustrated by the examples of the projects shown in the exhibition. The works are presented and explained by the artists themselves. The tour is in English.

Thursday, September 5, 2024, 1:00 p.m. to 2:30 p.m., Daniela Duca De Tey (Co-Curator Ars Electronica Animation Festival) will welcome you to the “Artist Tour: New Animation Art”. It is dedicated to the award-winning animations of 2024, the artists discuss narrative techniques, technological innovations and their commitment to social change. The tour is in English.

Friday, September 6, 2024, 3:00 to 4:30 p.m., Emiko Ogawa (Head of Prix Ars Electronica) will address “Artistic Actions at the Interfaces of Media Art”. Her curatorial tour asks about the interactions between activism, technologies and critical artistic expression in the global media art scene. The tour is in English.

Saturday, September 7, 2024, 2:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m., Christl Baur (Head of Ars Electronica Festival) will take a curatorial look at the Prix Ars Electronica Exhibition. On the basis of the projects shown, she primarily provides insight into artistic practices. The tour is in German.

The Prix Ars Electronica Award Ceremony

This year’s Prix Ars Electronica Award Ceremony will take place on Thursday, September 5. The winners will then receive their Golden Nicas. Also in the spotlight on the evening will be the winners of the S+T+ARTS Prize, the S+T+ARTS Prize Africa, the European Union Prize for Citizen Science, the Ars Electronica Award for Digital Humanity and the State of the ART(ist) initiative. The Prix Ars Electronica Award Ceremony will take place for the first time at the Design Center Linz.

The Prix Ars Electronica Forums

Saturday, September 7, 2024. The traditional Prix Ars Electronica Forums will be held for the first time in 2024 as part of the three-day symposium on the theme of the Festival. On Saturday, September 7, the prizewinners will take the podium to talk with researchers, technologists and activists especially about AI and creativity. The focus is not on the performance of the technology, but on its potential in the creative process. The artists talk about successes and failures in the use of AI, explore what a sustainable and inclusive ecosystem for creative AI could look like, and discuss what the AI era could mean for the current definition of intellectual property and the business models based on it.

The Ars Electronica Animation Festival

The Ars Electronica Animation Festival presents current artistic productions in the field of digital animation. The specially curated selection comes largely from the submissions of the Prix Ars Electronica 2024, which shifted its focus from “Computer Animation” to “New Animation Art” last year. Program tracks such as the “Prix Ars Electronica Best-Of”, “AI & Human”, “H-O-P-E” or “Austrian Panorama” show the breadth and diversity of the medium—not only in terms of narrative techniques, conceptual experiments and technological innovations, but also in terms of commitment to social change and new political visions. Around 40 projects will be presented. This selection is complemented by three outstanding guest programs compiled by SIGGRAPH, ISEA and the Runway AI Film Festival.

The Ars Electronica Animation Festival with daily changing programs can be experienced for the first time from September 4 to 8 at the JKU medSPACE, which offers an immersive 4K experience with a 14 x 7 meter projection screen. The space is located on the JKU MED Campus and was developed and implemented by Ars Electronica Futurelab.

The Prix Ars Electronica Exhibition 2024 / Projects

Smoke and Mirrors / Beatie Wolfe (GB)

Smoke and Mirrors poignantly contrasts the oil industry’s marketing campaigns with the alarming rise in methane levels in the atmosphere. A four and a half minute animation shows the rapid growth since 1970 and misleading slogans such as “Lies they tell our children” (Mobil, 1984), “Unsettled science” (ExxonMobil, 2000), “Oil Pumps Life” (American Petroleum Institute, 2017) or “Net-Zero” (Shell, 2023), with which oil companies around the world are fueling doubts about science and its measurements.

Beatie Wolfe’s visualization is based on the iconic “Blue Marble” photo of the Apollo 17 crew from 1972. The climate data comes from the Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration NOAA and the European Environment Agency. The animated globe is accompanied by “Oh My Heart” – the first record made from sustainable bioplastics, which Beatie Wolfe produced together with musician Michael Stipe and Brian Eno’s “EarthPercent”. The title Smoke and Mirrors alludes to the depiction of methane emissions, but also to our careless treatment of nature itself.

Beatie Wolfe received a Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica for Smoke and Mirrors.

I’m Feeling Lucky / Timothy Thomasson (CA)

With the real-time animation I’m Feeling Lucky, Timothy Thomasson fascinatingly questions the relationships between image, geography, virtual space, media technology, and data collection. He creates a surreal 3D landscape without a clear historical or geographical reference. Rivers, forests, and tall tumbleweeds merge into a cinematic narrative populated by thousands of stationary 3D figures randomly extracted from Google Street View footage.

Timothy Thomasson addresses the mass archiving and use of photographic material from our everyday lives—the real role models are neither aware that they have been captured by Google nor that their images can appear in a completely new context. Inspired by the immersive panoramic paintings of the 19th century that depicted natural landscapes, warlike scenes, religious events or cityscapes, I’m Feeling Lucky creates a limitless experience without a fixed framework. A virtual camera glides endlessly and leisurely over the surreal scenery, free of hectic movements or rapid cuts.

Credits
Timothy Thomasson
Sound design & composition: Tatum Wilson
With support from: Canada Council for the Arts, Société des arts technologiques (SAT) Residency Program, Canadian Cultural Center Paris

Stained / Jeremy Kamal (US)

With fascinating 3D animations, Stained creates an alternative vision of the future: In the fictional world “Mojo,” Black cultures have had a lasting impact on the American landscape. Protagonist Demetrius is a member of the “Crimson Needles” gang, who mark their territory with red-colored plants. In a flashback, he remembers how his fascination with a blue plant once led to him being ostracized—displays of this kind are taboo in the gang. Intimate moments reveal Demetrius’ inner conflict as he struggles to cope emotionally. In Stained, Jeremy Kamal creates a new type of symbiosis: gang culture becomes a landscape phenomenon, its members transform into environmentalists and tea producers. People, technologies, nature, and fiction merge into an alternative way of life that tries to overcome real divides. Jeremy Kamal encourages us to look at landscapes from new perspectives and to see their design as a collaborative project with diverse possibilities. His animated vision combines climate activism, environmental protection, and ecology with the reality of Black Americans’ lives. The fictional place Mojo serves him as a projection surface for novel rituals, mythologies and landscape visions that go beyond common ideas of nature.

Credits
Created by Jeremy Kamal
Music: Nathan Buttel & Jeremy Kamal
AI creative direction: Case Miller
Additional AI work: Jonathan Penvose

Mid Tide #3 / Ryu Furusawa (JP)

Mid Tide #3 is a video installation created through digital manipulation of video data that rewrites the conditions of space and time. Ryu Furusawa has developed software for this purpose that transforms video data into a three-dimensional object and uses time as a depth dimension. The interplay of movement and the changing space-time condition in the image becomes an immersive experience.

Credits
With support from: Project to Support Emerging Media Arts Creators, Agency for Cultural Affairs, Government of Japan, 2023; Tokyo University of the Arts Graduate School of Film and New Media

Unknown Label / Nicolas Gourault (FR)

Unknown Label is a video installation that shows the daily experiences of online microworkers from the Global South who identify and label images for self-driving cars and thus make them usable for AI. It examines the power asymmetries and neo-colonialist abuses associated with the manual work necessary to train AI systems. Unknown Label aims to draw attention to the many people who, behind the scenes, enable machines to see the world and how they see it.

Unknown Label is a digital collage that interweaves fragments of annotated images with a virtual map of the world as seen by self-driving cars, creating a space where viewers can share the perspective of the data workers. The video installation poses the question of how images of our world, taken without our knowledge or consent, can be categorized and reclaimed.

Credits
Testimonies: Oliver, Elvina, Ivon, Yonaille, Jonel
Research Assistants: Leonard Nally Simala, Andrea Paola Hernandez, Niside Panebianco
Editing: Lucas Azémar, Nicolas Gourault
Screenwriting Advisor: Quentin Faucheux
Image Assistant: Héléna Michaud
Sound editing, re-recording: Etienne André
Thanks: Inès Sieulle, Antoine Chapon, Claire Williams, Clara Chapus, Charlotte Cherici, Yuyan Wang, Peter Zorn, Marcie Jost, Amir Borenstein, Mary Jimenez, Jorge Leon, Effi Weiss, Julie Pfleiderer, Jan De Coster, Susanne Weck, Julien Chapelle, Sasha Litvintseva & Beny Wagner, Don Quichotte Films, Yannick Beauquis, Quentin Brayer, Julian Posada, Milagros Miceli, Paola Tubaro, Sana Ahmad, Alex Roy, Phil Koopman, Adrien Gaidon

Nosukaay / Diane Cescutti (FR)

Diane Cescutti’s multi-layered art combines different media—such as weaving, sculpture, installation, video and 3D visualization—and seeks to rethink our relationship with technology and textiles as carriers of knowledge, data, traditions and spirituality.

In the interactive installation Nosukaay she tells an alternative history of computer technology. The focus is on connections between computers, mathematics, and the traditional weaving knowledge of the Manjak people in Guinea-Bissau, West Africa. A Manjak loom merges with a computer to form a “textile machine,” while a hand-woven loincloth serves as a keyboard to control a filmic narrative. By touching the keyboard, the viewers themselves become part of the system—depending on the type and location of the interaction, the course of action and thus their own experience changes. Anyone who ignores traditional, spiritually charged knowledge is “thrown out” of history—an indication that imparting knowledge requires trust and respect.

With Nosukaay (meaning “computer” in Wolof), Cescutti traces ancient technology concepts that saw man and machine as a unit. At the same time, it refutes the misconception that African cultures have not contributed to technological progress and that African languages ​​do not have the terminology for technology and science.

Diane Cescutti received a Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica for Nosukaay.

Credits
Video: Sarah Maupin
Photos: Blanche Lafargue
Woven Manjak loincloth: Edimar Rosa
With support from: École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Lyon (ENSBA Lyon); Post-diplôme Art, Centre d’art image/imatge

If You Have Starry Skies in Your Eyes / Rib (JP)

People with disabilities often feel “invisible” and removed from society—this is what the Japanese artist Rib reports from her own experience. With her project If You Have Starry Skies in Your Eyes she counters this and confidently brings her difference to the fore.

Until she was 12, Rib was a frequent victim of domestic violence, which, among other things, led to her becoming blind in her right eye. Instead of hiding this limitation with a prosthesis that is as lifelike as possible, she now wears a self-developed, glowing eye prosthesis. This consists of an integrated magnetic sensor, an LED light, and a battery encapsulated in medical acrylic resin. For Rib, being different is part of her history and her individuality—not a limitation, but an opportunity to express herself. If You Have Starry Skies in Your Eyes celebrates the charm and potential of physical differences and calls for them not to be hidden, but rather to be proudly displayed.

Credits
Artist: Rib
Videos, Shooting: Shiki Sakai
With support from: Sam Murai

Third World: The Bottom Dimension / Gabriel Massan (BR)

Third World: The Bottom Dimension is a visionary single-player PC game by Gabriel Massan. In collaboration with artists, researchers, and sound designers, he creates a virtual world—the Third World—that explores the experiences of Black Brazilians in the context of colonialism and challenges the systems and behaviors on which our social realities are built.

His sources of inspiration are the simulation mechanisms of The Sims, Saidiya Hartman’s method of critical fabulation and her stories of omissions in archives, as well as the theories of “consciousness raising” of the Brazilian educator Paolo Freire.

In each level of the game, new ideas and approaches flow into the mythology across two interconnected levels that are of particular importance to the people involved. The immersive exploration of the game world increasingly sensitizes to competing forms of consciousness: on the one hand, the colonial consciousness imposed by the virtual “headquarters” and its understanding of “exploration,” “nature,” and “knowledge,” and on the other hand, alternative forms that open up new possibilities for navigation in the world.

Conversations Beyond the Ordinary / Jan Zuiderveld (NL)

The coffee machine wants to be motivated to make an effort, the photocopier to interpret its own doodles and a microwave to be questioned about its own possessions: Conversations Beyond the Ordinary transforms everyday devices into beings with “their own consciousness and (unruly) character” in an interactive installation. By embedding generative AI into familiar objects, Conversations Beyond the Ordinary invites us to reflect on the evolving dynamics of power, agency and creativity between us and our machines.

Credits
Large Language Models – Mistral AI
Multimodal Large Language Models – Haotian Liu, Chunyuan Li, Yuheng Li, Bo Li, Yuanhan Zhang, Sheng Shen, Yong Jae Lee / Special thanks to Marcel van der Bilt, Olivier Blom, Arthur Elsenaar, Matteo Marangoni and Martie Verweij

G80 / Fragmentin (CH)

G80 is an interactive installation that proposes a contemporary interpretation of Richard Buckminster Fuller’s World Game: a War Games-inspired strategy simulation tool that aims at a “just distribution of resources” on a planetary scale. Developed in the era of cybernetics in the early 1960s, it embodies the promise that computers and mathematical models can help solve socio-political and ecological problems.

In contrast to this technocratic hypothesis, G80 questions the absurdity of the idea itself, which is rooted in a techno-capitalist system that refuses to look beyond mathematical models. The artwork shows a console with a matrix of 80 motorized sliders, reminiscent of a control room. Each slider corresponds to a variable whose name is engraved on a sign. At the ends of the sliders, the signs “+” and “-” indicate the stakes. Some variables are directly inspired by the variables developed by Buckminster, while others, new variables, shed light on the big questions of our time. Users are invited to interact with the work and playfully stabilize the world by changing the values of each variable. When they make a change, they find that all the sliders correlate with each other and the variables form changing patterns without their intervention.

Credits
Fragmentin (Laura Nieder, David Colombini, Marc Dubois)
The original edition of G80 was commissioned by Mudac (Lausanne)
With the support of Pro Helvetia

Kazokutchi / So Kanno (JP), Akihiro Kato (JP), Takemi Watanuki (JP)

The life cycle of a “Kazokutchi” includes reproduction, birth, growth and end of life. Each of these “Kazokutchi” is linked to an NFT that includes their name, date of birth, family name, and gene. This entry into the blockchain represents digital life that cannot be reset. So Kanno, Akihiro Kato and Takemi Watanuki create a diorama that is modeled on the city of Tokyo and is superimposed on the ecosystem of digital artificial life forms.

Credits
Logo design by Chihiro Oyama
Diorama production by Yuji Onoda

REPEAT AFTER ME, 2022 / Open Group – Yuriy Biley (UA), Pavlo Kovach (UA), Anton Varga (UA)

The video Repeat After Me shows people who had to flee eastern Ukraine and found shelter in a temporary camp in Lviv (western Ukraine). By imitating different types of weapons with their voices, they not only share their war experiences, but also give a kind of karaoke instruction around the sounds of war. The starting point of the sound sequences remains the dramatic reality in the war zone. 

Credits
REPEAT AFTER ME, 2022, Open Group (Yuriy Biley, Pavlo Kovach and Anton Varga), video installation, karaoke, video 17’7’’

Washed Out “The Hardest Part” / Paul Trillo (US)

Washed Out “The Hardest Part” by American filmmaker Paul Trillo is the first official music video created using OpenAI’s Sora text-to-video model. The result is a haunting video about loss and memory, grief and happiness, past and future. Paul Trillo portrays the fictional memories of a young woman who falls in love in middle school in the early 1980s, grows older with her partner, has a child and ultimately loses her partner. As she moves on with her life, she keeps dreaming about him. Like all memories, hers are subjective and a distorted reflection of reality.

Paul Trillo uses Sora’s hallucinatory, dream-like qualities to create an alienating space and unique imagery. He creates a journey through time through surreal environments and experiences that merge into one another. Artificial intelligence serves as the perfect tool to create an uncanny reflection of our reality that makes us believe something that never happened.

For Paul Trillo, the use of AI offers new opportunities for filmmakers, but he sees it as a complement to human creativity rather than a replacement. For him, transparency and ethics are the prerequisites for the sustainable use of this technology.

Paul Trillo received a Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica for Washed Out “The Hardest Part”.

REPETAE / Sasha Stiles (US)

REPETAE is a hybrid language arts series that fuses algorithms and poetry and shows how constant repetition affirms and produces meaning. Sasha Stiles uses generative elements such as AI-powered language, code-based images, and digitally looped and layered words to show how our emotions and perception are shaped by predetermined patterns. But it also shows that we can break and reverse these patterns. With REPETAE, Sasha Stiles demonstrates that repetition is not just reproduction, but a reinterpretation of the familiar that opens up endless new possibilities.

Credits
Works from REPETAE have been featured by: Kunstmuseum Bern, Gucci Art Program, Christie’s, Venus Over Manhattan, NYC, Tribute to Herbert W. Franke, Right Click Save: The New Digital Art Community (Vetro Editions, 2024), Decentralization, Please Save Culture (New Society, 2023), Outland, This is Paper.

STATEMENTS

“The fact that the Prix Ars Electronica exhibition is being shown for the first time at the Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz emphasizes a Linz quality that becomes visible anew every year at Ars Electronica: the openness and willingness to collaborate. For five festival days, almost all art and cultural institutions, universities and the independent scene will be transformed into a common stage, a laboratory and a forum for a unique artistic-scientific exploration of our present and future that attracts worldwide attention.”

Dietmar Prammer, Stadtrat für Planung und Liegenschaften der Stadt Linz

“The Prix Ars Electronica is the world’s most traditional and prestigious competition for media art. Every year, thousands of works from numerous countries are submitted, but only four receive the coveted Golden Nica in the end. An exclusive selection of these outstanding projects will be presented as part of the Ars Electronica Festival—for the first time at the Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz, a place that is perfectly suited for this.”

Doris Lang-Mayerhofer, Kulturstadträtin und Beiratsvorsitzende von Ars Electronica

“I am delighted that the Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz is exhibiting the winners of the Prix Ars Electronica for the first time at the Ars Electronica Festival 2024. The award-winning works offer inspiring insights and set important trends in media art. Our long-standing collaboration with the Ars Electronica Festival will be further strengthened by this exhibition at Lentos. We warmly invite everyone to experience these forward-looking works at Lentos.”

Hemma Schmutz, Künstlerische Direktorin Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz