Join us for a unique closing party of Ars Electronica 2021, on 11 September 2021! The Bal Masqué is a virtual club night: a corona-proof merger of an online dance battle, a digital masked ball and a multitude of individual VJ-set. You are all invited to wear your most crazy digital or real masks and party with us. Because of the pandemic, we now live, meet, work, celebrate and breathe online, and the ZOOM virtual background and Snap Camera mask options have become the new way to give flavor to our digital existence.

The Bal Masqué explores these new virtual environments as places for creativity, shared experiences, identity building, collectivity and fun. Zoom allows you to blur your background or import a new stationary image. But you can also make your own virtual backgrounds, import your own video compilations and even perform live coding and VJ sets in it. If you combine it with Snap Camera and Lens Studio, you can add your own masks or adapt and play with existing masks. To help you unleash your creativity we are organizing two workshops: Face and Body Filters (9 September) and VJ-ing on Zoom (10 September). The battles are the highlights of the Bal Masqué, in which three participants at a time show off their best virtual backgrounds and mask and compete for the prize for the most exceptional performance. But don’t take it all too seriously. The main purpose of the Bal Masqué and the battles is to have some online fun. And if you feel a bit shy, you can also join the party completely anonymously behind your mask as part of the audience.

Get inspired with teasers from previous Bal Masqué at IMPAKT: https://vimeo.com/521956461/27c99d8f47.
To participate as an audience member or battle participant, register at: https://forms.gle/zVjT7vXQTpPcrwwL8.