SHARESPACE

Foolish Flame / Leon Butler (IE), Peter Power (IE) - Photo: Leon Butler, Peter Power

Theater & Digital Media / Open Futurelab

Exhibit

SHARESPACE

How Do We Explore Future Spaces Where Humans and Avatars Collaborate?

SHARESPACE Consortium (EU), Ars Electronica Futurelab (AT), Leon Butler (IE), Peter Power (IE)

SHARESPACE is a cutting-edge XR research project funded under EU’s Horizon Europe program, bringing together 14 cross-Europe partners including the Ars Electronica Futurelab. Its mission: to explore hybrid spaces where humans and avatars engage in real-time, embodied collaboration.

At the Ars Electronica Festival, visitors can enjoy the results of the project, which are multi-user interactive artworks for Deep Space 8K where humans and avatars collaborate. These include Deep Sync Connect, focusing on social connectedness through shared physiological states and movements; Converge 2, a multiplayer puzzle experience; and Foolish Flame, an interactive piece about climate change and memory.

Furthermore, SHARESPACE operates in sports and health. In sport, a VR training tool for improving cycling performance was featured at the 2024 Olympic Games. In health, researchers are trialing XR therapy for treating lower-back pain.

POSTCITY, First Floor, Open Futurelab

  • Converge 2

    Patrick Berger (AT), Victor Petro (AT), Raphael Schaumburg-Lippe (AT)

    Converge 2 is the next step in exploring collaborative multiplayer experiences in Deep Space 8K. Extending the original Converge, this iteration expands the concept with refined scenes and experiments with technologies from the SHARESPACE project, aiming to deepen shared presence and collaboration.

  • Foolish Flame

    Leon Butler (IE), Peter Power (IE)

    Foolish Flame is a transdisciplinary piece that explores the impact we have on the fraught frontiers of climate change. Through collective experience, visitors become avatars in an evolving landscape of environmental narratives and inherited cultural trauma—confronting the grief associated with a changing natural world.

Credits

Ars Electronica Futurelab: Roland Haring, Daniel Rammer, Cyntha Wieringa, Patrick Berger, Susanne Kiesenhofer, Anna Weiss Collaborating Artists: Leon Butler, Peter Power PARTNERS: German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI); Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise; CRdC Nuove Tecnologie per le Attività Produttive Scarl; Cyens Center of Excellence; Golaem S.A.; Hospital Vall d’Hebron; Institut national de recherche en sciences et technologies du numérique; Lightspace Technologies SIA; Ricoh Europe; Universitat Jaume I De Castellon; University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE); University of Montpellier; De Montfort University This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation program under grant agreement No. 10192889.

Please note: The program for the Ars Electronica Festival 2025 is still in progress.
We are currently preparing all the information for the website and plan to put the full program online in the coming days – stay tuned!