Gradual Exposure

At this year’s Ars Electronica Festival, MOME (Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design) will showcase a curated selection of student artworks emerging from a variety of departments, reflecting the institution’s strong cross-disciplinary ethos. The featured projects are rooted in a shared urgency: addressing the complex and interconnected crises that shape contemporary life. From the proliferation of misinformation, the erosion of trust in digital environments, and geopolitical tensions, to the accelerating transformations brought on by climate change, the installations offer critical and often poetic responses to global issues. The works span a broad range of media and modes of inquiry—including speculative design, visual taxonomies, and performative installations—alongside projects that incorporate custom electronics, sound, and interactive light. Across the exhibition, many of the works question our understanding of time, data, and agency—engaging audiences in a sensory dialogue with systems that are at once personal and planetary. Together, these installations form a collective narrative that is both reflective and forward-looking. They are less about providing solutions and more about opening up new perspectives, inviting the viewer to pause, reflect, and recalibrate their relation to a rapidly changing world. MOME’s presence at this year’s festival underscores the power of art and design education to not only interpret the present, but also to prototype the future.