The Ars Electronica Festival 2025 presents a diverse program of performances at the intersection of art, technology, and society. Across multiple venues, artists from around the world invite audiences to experience new forms of storytelling that challenge perception, spark dialogue, and open spaces for collective imagination.
Dystopia Land / Etsuko Ichihara - Photo: Ayami Kawashima
Collection
Performances
2208–2388
Alberto Anhaus (IT), Giovanni Falascone (IT)
2208–2388 daily transforms SOTTOBOSCO into a vibrating sonic biome. Two cymbals, bowed like a double bass, emit precise frequencies that awaken the installation’s swarm of robotic insects, weaving metallic whispers and resonant echoes into an immersive ritual where technology, vibration, and matter coalesce in a living acoustic organism.
Activities at the Main Station of “Digital Shadows”
Institute of Networks and Security, JKU Linz (AT)
Discover how biometrics work—and how to outsmart it. Build your data cloud, make key choices, and join an interactive experience that challenges the future of data, privacy, and control.
A Deep Hole Full of Water
Noga Shalit Glick (IL), Naomi Weisselberg (IL)
A live, intimate performance in an aquatic world of sound. Shadows, words, and two voices dissolve into one. Through electronic music, field recordings, and voice, the work explores how voice moves when time slows and sensation sinks.
Doodle Book
Tung-Yu, Liu (TW)
Doodle Book is an interactive sound instrument—like a hand-drawn notebook that sings. Visual marks trigger generative audio responses, letting color speak. Through loops and chance, it creates a performative space located between order and play, stability and creative disruption.
Linzmassol: A tale of two cities
Marinos Koutsomichalis (CY), Andra Panainte (CY), Kristina Thuduwage (CY), Giorgos Pitsillis (CY), Maria Zikou (CY)
Local audiences in Linz are invited to join a riverwalk along the Danube, retracing the steps of the heroine who has somehow magically teleported to Linz, and to experience Newport—the sequel to the comic Oldport.
L. T. Y.
Tsung-Yun Lai (TW)
L.T.Y. is a live improvisation merging analog and digital modular synthesis via VCV Rack. It explores sound as embodied experience, unfolding unstable yet fluid sonic structures through real-time sampling. The work invites intuitive listening within a terrain of emergence and transformation.
making friends
Annick Durán Kandzior (CL/DE), Anastasia Landa (CZ), Szerafina Roxaná Thalia Schiesser (DE), Yeganeh Shafie (IR)
A participatory theater play in which important friendship skills are repeatedly practised through structuring, repetition, and exercise.
Micro-Rituals for “Dystopia Land”
Etsuko Ichihara (JP), Civic Creative Base Tokyo [CCBT] (JP)
In the exhibition space, Etsuko Ichihara will lead intimate, ritual-inspired interactions with visitors, exploring dystopian scenarios and world-building within the context of an alternative Japan.
My Data Is Bigger Than Yours
Ilona Roth (AT/DE), Alina Lugovskaya (UA/RU), Selina Nowak (AT), A!KO Tanz Fest (KR/AT), Digital Shadows (AT)
Curious about who owns your data? Join a thrilling wrestling match and dance battle where rivals fight for control—a playful yet sharp take on the public debate around data ownership.
NEBELKEGELN (Fog Bowling)
STADTWERKSTATT / STWST (AT), Combatants and Guests
This year’s Stadtwerkstatt art event NEBELKEGELN stages a spectacle of reduced visibility, diffuse events, invisibility, and unverifiability with its bowling tournament in fog.
Night Terrors
Lisa Derksen Castillo (NL/ES), Suzanne van Dongen (NL)
Inspired by the scientific study of parasomnia, this intervention invites people to confront their hidden fears through participatory video projections in public spaces.
NO PANIC Science Slam
Gregor Pechmann (AT)
[EVENT CANCELLED] The motto of this year’s festival questions our social and technological developments. Should we be panicking? JKU scientists and students from different fields give playful insights into the fascination towards their research topics and try to convince the audience that there should be NO PANIC.
Overture
Andrea Corradi (IT)
A group of musicians will play without any amplification in the center of Linz, along with the city’s weekly siren test.
Performance: AI Facial Profiling, Levels of Paranoia
Marta Revuelta (ES/CH), Laurent Weingart (CH)
An AI-powered physiognomic machine analyzes your face to assess your potential threat level. Inspired by real-world security protocols and biased algorithms, this interactive installation critically questions the legitimacy of machine-driven decision-making.
President of Austria meets Big Data Execs
Dominika Meindl (AT), René Mayrhofer (AT), Digital Shadows Performing Artists Team (IT/AT/DE/RU/UA/GB)
Famous Austria’s wannabe president and her royal advisor host Big Data execs for a courtly debate on tech, trojans & trendy apps—feat. René Mayrhofer on science & consequences.
REMMP—Robotic Engineering of Multimaterial Multiobjective Paraphrenalia
Daniel Sviták (CZ)
Experiments with robotic printing push the boundaries of machine-made structures and explore the difference between a robot and a printer.
Ritual for your Inner Child
Andrada Băleanu (RO)
Ritual for Your Inner Child is a three-part performance series following Zoe Fluturandis, a fictional ASMR wellness influencer, as she unveils a revolutionary headset developed by the equally fictional wellness brand MeverOne.
She’s So Centsible!
Passion Asasu (TH)
She’s So Centsible! is a durational performance powered by the audience—insert coins into the acceptor to match the hourly minimum wage (€12.41), and the performer runs until the money runs out. The work explores the entanglement of labour, energy, and financial responsibility.
Studio Sessions: Interplayful Performance Stage
Ariathney Coyne (GR/US), Lee Jung In Creation (KR), Daniel Hans Walter (AT), Elena Jäger (DE), Pal Klusacek (AT), Lukas Frühwirth (AT), Arthur Gutmann (AT), Julian Lang (DE), Francisco Valenca Vaz (BR), Emilia Vogt (DE), Noayama (DE), Sofiia Zeifert (RU), Blaž Cunk (SI), Shuting Wang (CN), kankster + panki (AT)
We are once again transforming the studio space into an experimental performance universe, featuring a variety of formats—from contemporary dance with tracking systems to electronic music and cutting-edge visualizations.
Sweet Water 3.0
ChunLi (TW)
Sweet Water 3.0, curated by ChunLi, is an audiovisual performance combining live improvised music with generative visuals. Blending myth and futurity, it unfolds a story of contemporary irony through electronic textures and reverberated fragments of narration.
The Data Devourers
Digital Shadows Performing Artists Team (IT/AT/DE/RU/UA/GB)
Performers with giant heads as data powerholders play hide-and-seek, while you try to win back control by getting data release forms—raising questions about who really owns your personal data.
Overture
Andrea Corradi (IT), Ricardo Pastor Pérez (ES), Gorka Egino Arroyo (ES/PV), Sandra Muciño (MX), Te-En Chen (TW), Juan Lopez Cuamatzi (MX), Andreas Grünauer (AT)
Overture aims to transform an element of panic into an element of harmony. The protagonist of this performance, the “wöchentlicher Sirenentest,” which translates as “weekly siren test,” sounds every Saturday in Linz at noon.