(Linz, September 1, 2025) In the face of global crises and growing uncertainty, Ars Electronica 2025 is dedicated to exploring the role of art in times of profound change—as a space for reflection and dialogue, a source of inspiration for alternative narratives, and a catalyst for transformation.

This is particularly evident in the Prix Ars Electronica exhibition, which presents eleven outstanding media art projects at the Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz, along with performances at St. Mary’s Cathedral.

Prix Ars Electronica: Nearly 95,000 Submissions Since 1987

The Prix Ars Electronica is the world’s most prestigious and longest-standing media art competition. Initiated in 1987, the Linz-based competition has received around 95,000 submissions to date. Its reputation does not stem from awarding (yet another) prize to big names, but from spotlighting artists today who will be widely recognized tomorrow. In 2025 alone, about 4,000 submissions from nearly 100 countries were reviewed and examined regarding the concerns, methods, technologies, and collaborations shaping artists’ work around the globe. The Prix Ars Electronica serves as a barometer of trends.

Prix Ars Electronica: A Platform for Additional Competitions

The prestige of the competition is reflected not only in its annual number of submissions. Over the decades, the competition has also become a sought-after platform for institutions and initiatives aiming to promote artistic innovation and creativity at the intersection of art, technology, and society.

In 2016, the first major collaboration with the European Commission was established with the STARTS Prize. This was followed in 2023 by the European Union Prize for Citizen Science and in 2024 by the STARTS Prize Africa.

In cooperation with the Austrian Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs, two additional competitions are held under the umbrella of the Prix Ars Electronica: the Ars Electronica Award for Digital Humanity and State of the ART(ist), an initiative that honors artists working under life-threatening conditions.

Prix Ars Electronica 2025

In 2025, the Prix Ars Electronica was awarded in four categories and received 3,987 submissions from 98 countries.

In the category New Animation Art (1,430 submissions), Frode Oldereid and Thomas Kvam (both NO) won with Requiem for an Exit. In the category Digital Musics & Sound Art (1,127 submissions), Navid Navab (IR/CA) and Garnet Willis (CA) were recognized for their project Organism. In the category Artificial Life & Intelligence (910 submissions), the Golden Nica went to Paula Gaetano Adi (AR/US). In the Austria-wide category u19–create your world (520 submissions), Aleksa Jović and Nico Pflügler (Gilbert Gnos Productions) from the HBLA for Artistic Design in Linz impressed the jury with their short film Das Ziegenkäsemachen aus der Sicht der Ziege (Making Goat Cheese from the Goat’s Perspective).

The jury of this year’s Prix Ars Electronica included Boris Eldagsen (DE), Ayoung Kim (KR), Ari Melenciano (US), Everardo Reyes (FR/MX), Liz Rosenthal (UK), Miriam Akkermann (DE), Dietmar Lupfer (DE), Kamila Metwaly (EG/PL), Ali Nikrang (AT/IR), Nao Tokui (JP), Clemens Apprich (AT), Tamar Clarke-Brown (UK), Charlotte Jarvis (UK), Špela Petrič (SI), Simon Weckert (DE), Vivian Bausch (AT), Clara Donat (AT), Jan G. Grünwald (DE), Katharina Hof (AT), and Conny Lee (AT).

Prix Ars Electronica Award Ceremony

September 4, 2025 | 7:30–10:00 p.m. (doors open at 6:45 p.m.) | Design Center Linz

The Golden Nicas will be presented to the winners during the Prix Ars Electronica Award Ceremony, which will take place for the second time at the Design Center Linz.

Sarah Ciston (US) and representatives of the LAS Art Foundation (DE), winners of this year’s STARTS Prize, as well as representatives of Kairos Futura (KE), winners of the STARTS Prize Africa, will also be honored that evening.

They will be joined on stage by representatives of the initiatives HEROINES: Heritage of Emancipation (RS), the Antiquake Risk Hunter Community (TR), and MoFWaste-The Museum of Food Waste (PT), recipients of the European Union Prize for Citizen Science.

Additional awards will go to evala (JP), winner of the Isao Tomita Special Prize, Domestic Data Streamers (ES), winners of the Ars Electronica Award for Digital Humanity, and David Shongo (KE), winner of the State of the ART(ist) Main Prize.

Ars Electronica Animation Festival 2025

September 3 to 7, 2025 | Ars Electronica Center and Cathedral Square

The Animation Festival program is curated from entries to the Prix Ars Electronica 2025, whose competition category now focuses on the expansive field of New Animation Art, moving beyond traditional computer animation. This year alone, 1,119 entries were submitted, 25 of which will be shown during the festival. They will be complemented by a Best-Of Prix Ars Electronica, the thematic program Panic, an Austrian Panorama, and the Young Animations series, showcasing filmmakers under the age of 19. Guest programs will also be presented by the PROYECTOR Festival, the Animationsinstitut of the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg, and the Hagenberg Campus of the University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria. Featured artists include Alessandro Bavari (IT), Alona Rodeh (IL/RO), Wendi Yan (CN/US), and Total Refusal (AT).

Prix Ars Electronica Exhibition 2025

September 3 to 7, 2025 | Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz and St. Mary’s Cathedral

For the second consecutive year, the Prix Ars Electronica exhibition will be presented at the Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz, presenting eleven outstanding media art projects, including the robotic installation Requiem for an Exit by Thomas Kvam and Frode Oldereid (NO) and the political robotics project Guanaquerx by Paula Gaetano Adi (AR/US).

A further highlight will be Organism by Navid Navab (IR/CA) and Garnet Willis (CA) on view at St. Mary’s Cathedral. During the festival, Navid Navab will host three performances there.

Guided Tours During Festival Week

September 3 to 7, 2025 | Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz

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

Prix Ars Electronica Exhibition 2025

Bora: Bora
Zhao Zhou (NL)

Zhao Zhou explores spatial experiences and the limits of our sensory perception: In the installation Bora: Bora, 96 modified subwoofers arranged along an open aluminum tunnel create an immersive sound experience as visitors walk through. Each speaker, housed in a transparent, cone-shaped enclosure, generates continuous air vortices that produce low-frequency sounds and a soundscape limited to high and low frequencies. The origin of the next air vortex remains unpredictable.

Visitors are invited to embrace the invisible air currents and unfamiliar frequencies—and to sharpen those senses that usually recede into the background in a world dominated by visual impressions.

Credits
Concept, Artistic Direction & Design: Zhao Zhou | Soundscape: Mint Park | Embedded Software: Nathan Marcus | Mentorship: Zalán Szakács Supported by Amarte Foundation & Schemerlicht Talent Programme.

Requiem for an Exit
Frode Oldereid (NO), Thomas Kvam (NO)

The installation Requiem for an Exit centers a towering robotic figure—a skeletal construct of steel, hydraulics, and circuitry. Its only means of expression are its voice and a moving head. Its digitally sculpted and hyper-realistic face imbues the robot with an unsettling presence, amplified by a dense soundscape.

A philosophical provocation unfolds as the robot calmly begins its monologue, reflecting on genocide as a recurring feature in human history. It speaks of early ancient annihilations, colonial massacres, and systematic extermination, up to present-day sieges and displacements. The “requiem” is not for the machine or the dead, but for the myths we continue to believe: that progress brings salvation, that intelligence ensures ethics, that technology can redeem the human.

Credits
Programming: Thomas Kvam and Frode Oldereid
Software and system development: Øystein Kjørstad Fjeldbo
Hydraulic system engineer: Thomas Götz
Co-produced by Meta.Morf 2024, curated by Zane Cerpina and Espen Gangvik, TEKS – Trondheim Elec-tronic Arts Centre
Special thanks: Lars Paalgard
With support from: the Fritt Ord Foundation; the Audio and Visual Fund; Meta.Morf Biennale; TEKS – Trondheim Electronic Arts Centre; OCA – Office for Contemporary Art, Norway

Guanaquerx
Paula Gaetano Adi (AR/US)

In 1817, the Andes Revolutionary Army carried out a monumental operation: 5,200 men and women, accompanied by over 10,000 mules and horses, crossed the Andes from Argentina to Chile to help liberate Latin America from Spanish colonial rule. Two centuries later, a different kind of insurgent retraced the route over seven days: a four-legged robot named Guanaquerx (modeled after the guanaco) joined by artists, engineers, local muleteers, and 58 mules and horses. Their mission: to reclaim the Andes as a site of resistance and reimagine robotics for planetary liberation.

Developed by a transdisciplinary team, Guanaquerx, partially made from caña colihue (bamboo) and dressed in Andean textiles, fuses ancestral knowledge with robotics to promote a technology rooted in collaboration and locality. The project invites us to imagine an emancipatory technological revolution—one that reclaims the unfinished project of decolonization and sees robots as allies in building a sustainable future.

Credits
With support from Creative Capital, Hyundai Motor Group and the Rhode Island School of Design.

XXX Machina
Erin Robinson (GB), Anthony Frisby (GB)

XXX Machina is an immersive computational installation that examines how Artificial Intelligence destabilizes erotic desire, identity, and intimacy. Operating as an “autonomous desire machine,” it generates a recursive stream of deepfake imagery, videos, stills, and 3D renderings of the artist Erin Robinson. This erotic imagery was created using diffusion models trained on prompts from AI porn platforms.

Initially resembling conventional pornography, the images soon begin to rupture: bodies glitch, fragment, and recombine, detaching from coherent corporeal referents and becoming increasingly uncanny. XXX Machina ultimately asks what becomes of longing in a world where the other has been simulated and made obsolete.

Credits
Sound: Jamie Turner

Mineral Amnesia
Ioana Vreme Moser (RO) 

Mineral Amnesia traces the evolution and decay of EPROMs—the first computer memory chips that could be erased and reprogrammed—through sound. Encased beneath quartz windows made of pure crystal, EPROMs lose their stored information when exposed to light. This phenomenon becomes the starting point of the installation, which includes EPROMs from different generations.

Within the installation, the chips are placed under an artificial light source, causing their stored data to first distort and then gradually dissolve into digital noise. Some EPROMs from the 1970s transform programs into sounds, while others reveal narrated stories. Once the memories are fully erased, the installation falls silent. Visitors witness the precise moment when stories vanish and machines forget.

Credits
Commissioned by Simultan Assosciation and Galerie Nord
Curated by: Levente Kozma, Carsten Seiffarth, Veronika Witte
Technical support: Dorian Largen
Assistance: Alin Rotariu, Gloria Vreme Moser, Theo Vreme MoserWoodwork: Alex Matusciac
With support from: Administration of the National Cultural Fund (RO); Stiftung Kunstfonds, Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa (DE)

Organism + Excitable Chaos
Navid Navab (IR/CA), Garnet Willis (CA) 

Organism is a robotically modified historical pipe organ, deliberately designed to produce sounds suppressed for centuries. In the installation Organism + Excitable Chaos, a robotically controlled triple pendulum conducts the organ’s aerodynamic thresholds—the rapid exchange of potential and kinetic energy between the three arms brings kinetic chaos into dialogue with sonic turbulence, creating extraordinary sound experiences.

Under the title Organism: In Turbulence, Navid Navab will perform three times at St. Mary’s Cathedral in Linz: first as part of the Opening (Wed, Sept 3, 11:00–11:30 p.m.) and then twice on Festival Saturday (Sat, Sept 6, 12:30–1:30 p.m. and Sat, Sept 6, 8:00–9:00 p.m.).

Credits
Concept, direction, composition, sculpture, pro-gramming, design, electronics, sonification: Navid Navab
Sculpture, lead design, electronics, engineering: Garnet Willis
With support from: Canada Council for the Arts, Con-seil des arts et des lettres du Québec, Conseil des arts de Montréal

Bla Blavatar vs Jaap Blonk
Jonathan Chaim Reus (US/NL)

Bla Blavatar vs. Jaap Blonk takes the automation of creative processes to absurd extremes while exploring how dataset creation can be a deeply musical and social act. In live dataset-making performances, sound poet Jaap Blonk engages in a vocal battle with his AI-generated voice clone, the Bla Blavatar. His counterpart is performed by Jonathan Chaim Reus using Tungnaá, a custom-developed AI voice tool that redefines what counts as “voice”.

In each session, Blonk presents algorithmically generated “dataset poems” in RPA (Reduced Phonetic Alphabet), a notation system co-developed by the two artists. Each recording simultaneously becomes data for training the Bla Blavatar. The work invites audiences to consider the hidden labor behind AI Voice.

Credits
Performance, notation and dataset creation: Jonathan Chaim Reus and Jaap Blonk
Research and development of Tungnaá: Victor Shepardson and Jonathan Chaim Reus
With support from: PiNA – Association for Culture and Education, Intelligent Instruments Lab, University of Iceland, Stroom Den Haag, S+T+ARTS AIR: funded by European Union and co-funded by PiNA

From0
Superbe (BE)

From0 is an interactive sound and kinetic installation that invites emotional and sensory engagement with the musical dimension of language.

Visitors begin by speaking words, sentences, or sounds into the system. These inputs are broken down into twelve fragments and replayed by oscillating pendulums, each moving at a unique speed. The tones seem to slide and the order of the words gradually shifts, culminating in acoustic chaos. Visitors can use button controls to isolate sounds, freeze sequences, or create custom music loops. Eventually, after a few minutes, the system returns to coherent words once again. Through the interplay of repetition and transformation, From0 reveals the gap between meaning and form.

Credits
From0 was supported by the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles.

Ito Meikyū
Boris Labbé (FR)    

This virtual reality installation is inspired by classical art, Japanese literature, personal encounters, and the artist’s travels in Japan. Boris Labbé also draws on the key motif of traditional Japanese painting, the ”Fukinuki Yatai” technique, which reveals the interior of a building as seen from above with the roof removed. Through this compositional approach, he explores the multiplicity of perspectives, narrative connections, the almost encyclopedic panoramic composition, and the arrangement of geometries, motifs, and characters.

The installation presents a collection of drawn, animated, and sonic scenes. A subjective world—both inner and outer—takes the form of a labyrinth, made of fractal architecture and inhabited by plants, objects, animals, men, women, patterns, and calligraphy. Visitors are invited to wander through this virtual space freely, making spontaneous discoveries.

Credits
Written and directed by Boris Labbé
Produced by Ron Dyens and Gilles Chanial
Original music and sound design: Daniele Ghisi
Lead Developer: Charles Ayats
Developers: Elie Buglione, Germain Linder
Artists: Capucine Latrasse, Ryo Orikasa, Boris Labbé, Agathe Sollier, Collin Gallego Beatriz Ruthes dos Santos, Manu Batot
Sound: Daniele Ghisi and Alex Nogueira
Production: Sacrebleu Productions, Les Films Fauves, Parangon
Distribution: Unframed Collection

Anatomy of Non-Fact.
Chapter 1: AI Hyperrealism, Chapter 2: Tick, tick, tick… boom
Martyna Marciniak (PL)

Anatomy of Non-Fact is a multi-part artistic research project that examines the mechanisms of image-based disinformation and the visual aesthetics of AI-generated deepfakes. Two examples are featured in the Prix Ars Electronica exhibition:

Chapter 1: Hyperrealism focuses on the so-called “Fake Balenciaga Pope,” which attracted major media attention during the AI boom of 2023. Chapter 2: Tick, tick, tick… boom addresses manipulated images of the alleged “Pentagon explosion” that circulated in spring 2023, immediately impacting stock markets and cryptocurrency values. The project encourages a critical reflection on the relationship between image and truth—a tension that has existed for centuries.

Credits
Anatomy of Non-Fact was developed as part of the European Digital Deal Art Residency and Grant Program, with Ars Electronica. Chapter 1 was supported by Akademie Schloss Solitude and Chapter 2 by Kemmler Foundation.
Directed and produced by Martyna Marciniak with Derick Jenkins, Hagen Betzwieser, Marco Pascarelli, Ralf Schuster, Kotryna Slapsinskaite, Edward Grace, Joanne Grace, Rojia Forouhar Abadeh, Mindaugas Patapas.

This project has been developed and is presented in the context of European Digital Deal. European Digital Deal is co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union and by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Housing, Arts, Culture, Media and Sport.

Otocyon Megalotis
evala (JP) 

The Japanese artist evala is pursuing a project series titled See by Your Ears, in which unique sound spaces are created, and the boundaries of perception are explored. The starting point is Otocyon Megalotis, a three-dimensional sound installation that is experienced alone in a completely dark, anechoic box. 

For the seven-minute soundscape, evala conducted field recordings in his hometown of Kyotango in northern Kyoto, artificially created the echoes and reflections of the spaces, applied acoustic transformations, and thus created a dynamic space that itself becomes an instrument. Visitors are invited to “see with their ears” and to fully immerse themselves with all their senses in the spatial sound design.

Credits
Sound Composition, Recording, Programming: evala

Statements

„The Prix Ars Electronica may not be as familiar to people in Linz and Upper Austria as the Festival or the Ars Electronica Center. Yet, in many ways, it is the lifeblood of Ars Electronica. Since 1987, thousands of projects have been submitted every year—this year alone, nearly 4,000 from around 100 countries. With this long-standing competition, Ars Electronica has developed a unique sensibility for emerging trends and developments, as well as an inexhaustible source of outstanding artistic works that are presented to the Linz audience as part of the Festival.“

Dietmar Prammer, Mayor of the City of Linz and Owner Representative of Ars Electronica

„The Prix Ars Electronica is one of the most important media art awards in the world. The Prix Ars Electronica exhibition at the Lentos Kunstmuseum is a striking testament to this. The high-profile projects showcased here engage critically with the pressing questions of our time while also highlighting the opportunities for progress in our society. Art in tune with the present—that is the essence of the Prix Ars Electronica.“

Doris Lang-Mayerhofer, City Councilor for Culture and Chair of Ars Electronica’s Supervisory Board

„For almost four decades, the Prix Ars Electronica has demonstrated how art and society open up new perspectives on technology. This year, the exhibition at Lentos once again presents a selection of award-winning works, highlighting the diversity and criticality of media art today. In a present shaped by uncertainty and upheaval, we are especially pleased that these positions become visible and open to discussion at Lentos. We warmly invite everyone to join us!“

Hemma Schmutz, Artistic Director Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz

Guanaquerx / Paula Gaetano Adi (AR/US)

Photo: Pavel Romaniko. Guanaquerx | Paula Gaetano Adi

Requiem for an Exit / Frode Oldereid (NO), Thomas Kvam (NO)

Photo: Thomas Kvam

Bora: Bora / Zhao Zhou (NL)

Photo: Riccardo De Vecchi

Anatomy of Non-Fact. Chapter 1: AI Hyperrealism / Martyna Marciniak (PL)

Photo: Martyna Marciniak

XXX Machina / Erin Robinson (GB), Anthony Frisby (GB)

Photo: Erin Robinson, Anthony Frisby

Mineral Amnesia / Ioana Vreme Moser (RO)

Photo: Ioana Vreme Moser