Jury 2023

Prix Ars Electronica

New Animation Art
Artificial Intelligence & Life Art
Digital Musics & Sound Art
u19 – create your world

2023 Jury Statements

Credit: Florian Voggeneder

New Animation Art

Lev Manovich

Lev Manovich is a world-renown innovator and top influencer in many fields, including digital art, media theory, digital humanities, and cultural analytics. He is a Presidential Professor at The Graduate Center, City University of New York, and a Director of the Cultural Analytics Lab. Manovich was included in the list of “25 People Shaping the Future of Design” and the list of “50 Most Interesting People Building the Future”. He is an author of 180 articles and 15 books that include Cultural Analytics, Instagram and Contemporary Image, and The Language of New Media described as “the most suggestive and broad-ranging media history since Marshall McLuhan.” His digital art projects were shown in 120 international exhibitions in Centre Pompidou, ICA London, ZKM, KIASMA, and other leading venues.
manovich.net

Philippe Pasquier

Philippe Pasquier (CA) is a multidisciplinary media artist, scientific researcher, educator, and community builder. Philippe is a Professor at Simon Fraser University’s School for Interactive Arts and Technology, in Vancouver (Canada), where he directs the Metacreation Lab for Creative AI. There, he is pursuing a multidisciplinary research-creation program focused on generative systems and applied AI for creative tasks. Along with the Metacreation Lab fellows, Philippe has co-authored over 200 peer-reviewed contributions presented in the most rigorous scientific venues. His MOOC class on Generative Art and Computational Creativity on the Kadenze platform is serving thousands.
philippepasquier.com

Helen Starr

Helen Starr (TT) is an Afro-Carib world-building producer, writer, curator and a Sci-Fi lover. Carib people are indigenous to Trinidad, WI where Helen was born. Helen founded The Mechatronic Library in 2010, to give artists with protected characteristics access to cutting edge technologies such as Game Engines and Virtual Reality (VR). Working at the intersection of Art, Technology and social care, Helen has commissioned, curated and produced several exhibitions with interactive artworks for public institutions such as South London Gallery, Wysing Art Centre, FACT (Foundation for Art & Creative Technology) and QUAD in Derby.

Mimi Son

Mimi Son (KR) is one of two artists from the collective Kimchi and Chips based in Seoul. Her artistic practice is characterised by a meticulous attention to detail and a willingness to embrace uncertainty and chance through the introduction of natural phenomena, moving lights and shifting perspectives. These are often presented as installations which focus on momentary happenings, wherein the separation between what is real and what is virtual collapses and blends. She is also a dedicated teacher and mentor, giving lectures and workshops to younger artists,  whilst also writing scenarios for design research, and serving as an artistic director for exhibitions. But recently most of time she is struggling to read and understand “Difference and Repetition” by Gilles Deleuze.
kimchiandchips.com

Credit: Christian Werner

Nora O’ Murchú

Nora O’ Murchú (IE) is a curator & researcher.  In her curatorial work she explores online culture and the implications of technological developments. Her multidisciplinary practice embraces narratives, and fictions and results in objects, exhibitions, and interventions. Her research aims to help people understand how complex socio-technical systems are imagined, built & used. She has curated exhibitions and events for institutions including Akademie Schloss Solitude, LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial, Rua Red, and The Science Gallery. She has held positions as a research associate for the Interaction Design Centre at the University of Limerick, the Interaction Research Studio at Goldsmiths, and CRUMB at the University of Sunderland. Her research on the impact of technology on curating has been published at Goldsmiths Press, Taylor & Francis and Springer. She currently serves as a lecturer in the Department of Computer Science and Information Systems at the University of Limerick in Ireland, and is the Artistic Director of transmediale in Berlin.
noraomurchu.com


Artificial Intelligence & Life Art

Kasia Chmielinski

Kasia Chmielinski (US) is the Co-Founder of the Data Nutrition Project and a researcher at the Harvard Kennedy School focused on building responsible data systems across industry, academia, government, and non-profit domains. Previously, they held positions at the United Nations (OCHA), US Digital Service (EOP / OMB), MIT Media Lab, McKinsey & Company, and Google. When not thinking about data, Kasia is usually cycling or birdwatching around the Northeastern United States.
datanutrition.org

Paolo Cirio

Paolo Cirio (IT/US) is an artist, activist, and media theorist. He engages with the social, economic, and cultural issues of contemporary society to address human rights, economic inequality, social justice, and democracy. Cirio has exhibited in international museums and has won prestigious awards. His artworks have been covered by hundreds of media outlets and he regularly gives public lectures and workshops at leading art festivals and universities worldwide.
paolocirio.net

Jens Hauser

Jens Hauser (DE/FR/DK) is a Paris and Copenhagen based media studies scholar and art curator focusing on the interactions between art and technology. He is currently a professor in art history at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). He is also a researcher at the Medical University Vienna, University of Copenhagen’s Medical Museion, and at École Polytechnique Paris-Saclay, as well as a distinguished faculty member of the Department of Art, Art History and Design at Michigan State University, where he co-directs the BRIDGE artist in residency program. At the intersection of media studies, art history and epistemology, he has developed a theory of biomediality as part of his PhD at Ruhr University Bochum, and has curated about thirty international exhibitions and festivals internationally.
ku-dk.academia.edu/JensHauser

Nora N. Khan

Nora N. Khan (US) is a critic, editor, and curator with a focus on digital visual culture, the politics of software, and philosophy of emerging technology. She is the Executive Director of Project X Foundation for Art & Criticism, publishing X-TRA in Los Angeles. She is co-curator of the next Biennale de L’Image en Mouvement with Andrea Bellini. Her short book Seeing, Naming, Knowing, on the logic of machine vision, was published by The Brooklyn Rail in 2019. Forthcoming: No Context: AI Art and the Stakes for Criticism (Lund Humphries), The Artificial and the Real (Art Metropole), and Kingdom (Primary Information). She has served as editor at Rhizome, HOLO, and Topical Cream.
noranahidkhan.com

Jurij Krpan

In the year 1995, Jurij Krpan (SI) conceived the Kapelica Gallery – Gallery for Contemporary Investigative Arts as a non-governmental and not-for-profit organization, where he is working as senior curator ever since. As a curator and commissioner he has contributed to domestic and international exhibitions and festivals, the largest international productions to date being the organization and artistic management of the Slovenian pavilion at the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003, the conceptual gallery Cosinus BRX at the European Commission building in Brussels and the 5.th triennial of Contemporary Investigative Arts 2006 at Museum of Modern Art – Ljubljana. Since 2012 he is the art director at Kesnikova Institute where investigative and production laboratories BioTehna, Rampa, and Vivarium are important development platforms for Kapelica Gallery. Since 2019 to present he is a member of national Council of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia. Jurij Krpan lectures about the artistic profile of the Kapelica Gallery and cultural profile of Kersnikova Institute in Slovenia as well as abroad.
kersnikova.org

Advisory Board 2023


Digital Musics & Sound Art

Ludger Brümmer

Ludger Brümmer (DE) holds a Masters in Pedagogy from the University of Dortmund and a Masters in Composition from the Folkwang Hochschule Essen. He has worked with the choreographer Susanne Linke, the Nederlands Dans Theater, Bernd Lintermann and rosalie. He has been commissioned and performed at GRM, Paris, IMEB Bourges, ICMC’s in San Jose, Tokyo, Banff, Thessaloniki and other places around the world. Since 2003 he has been director of the Institute for Music and Acoustics at ZKM Karlsruhe, later Hertz-Labor, and guest professor at the School of Design. Since 2017 he is also professor for composition for digital media at the Hochschule für Musik Trossingen and since 2009 member of the renowned “Akademie der Künste Berlin”.
ludgerbruemmer.com

Credit: Alexandra Stanić

Tonica Hunter

Tonica Hunter (GB) is a DJ, curator and cultural producer from London, based in Vienna since 2014. Since moving to Vienna in 2014 she has built her portfolio independently as a freelance curator for discourse, music/performance and visual arts. She has (co) founded and curated for various collectives (Sounds of Blackness, Series:Black) and projects in Vienna which center Black artists and use arts to redefine social space whilst contributing to conversations and thinking on inclusion and intersectionality and access to the cultural sector in Austria. Since 2021, she sits on the Beirat for Frauendomane as an expert for Arts and Culture and on the BMKÖS Beirat for Kulturinitiativen.
tonicahunter.com

Credit: tom mesic

Ali Nikrang

Ali Nikrang (AT) is an AI researcher and artist at the intersection of artificial intelligence and musical creativity. He has a technical and an artistic background. He studied composition with a focus on new media at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg and computer science at Johannes Kepler University with a focus on Intelligent Information Systems in Linz. He also received the first diploma in piano performance, also from the University Mozarteum. He worked as a researcher at the Austrian Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Vienna before joining the Ars Electronica Futurelab in 2011.
ars.electronica.art/futurelab/nikrang-ali

Małgorzata Płysa

Małgorzata Płysa (PL) is the co-director and curator of Unsound Festival – international festival of electronic and experimental music and art (since 2007) with the main edition in Kraków, Poland and satellite events in Warsaw, New York, Toronto, Adelaide, London and many more. Unsound is known for its interdisciplinary approach – fostering new collaborations and commissions of upcoming and innovative artists. Her interests are in contemporary music, art, technology and research in synaesthesia.

Asher Remy-Toledo

Asher Remy-Toledo (CO/US) is founder and artistic director of HYPHEN HUB, a New York based organization that works at the intersection of art and creative technologies. Asher has produced dozens of live events in New York and internationally where music, sound, performance and emergent technologies intersect.   Hyphen Hub seeks to create a bridge between innovation and artistic fields using its global network of artists, curators, engineers, designers, performers, choreographers, composers to bridge new types of collaborations among them and with institutions.
remytoledo.com


u19 – create your world

Lisa Ackerl

Lisa Ackerl (AT) studies architecture at the Linz University of Art. She is interested in the sustainable use of resources and the social and ecological aspects of urban development. Between her apprenticeship and the start of her studies, she became involved in climate protection. Since 2022 she has been working for the Student Union of the Linz University of the Arts as a sustainability officer. Her works and projects deal with urban development and ecology as well as technology and digital manufacturing methods. She puts her enthusiasm for crafts and technology into practice in 1to1 projects.
oeh-ufg.at/referat-fuer-nachhaltigkeit

Sirikit Amann

Sirikit Amann (AT) has been a juror since the very inception of the u19—create your world category for youngsters under 19 years of age in Austria. She was director of cultural education at KulturKontakt Austria. Since 2020 she is the head of the sector “Education and Society” with a focus on digital education at the OeAD-GmbH. The OeAD is the Austrian Agency for Education and Internationalization. She had previously served as an expert advisor in artistic affair at the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Art and Culture and in the Office of the former Federal Chancellery Minister.
oead.at

Conny Lee

Conny Lee (AT) is part of the core team of u19—create your world. The host of Radio FM4 is known nationwide – there she hosts the afternoon show FM4 Connected, produces and co-hosted the bilingual FM4 Morning Show and a show about video games in a socio-political context. In addition, Conny Lee is head of the “love department”, which deals with current topics in the areas of sex, love and dating. As an editor she reviews games, literature and comics.
fm4.orf.at/tags/connylee

Credit: Rafaela Pröll

Karl Markovics

Karl Markovics (AT) was born on 29 August 1963 in Vienna. Lives with his wife near Vienna. Is an actor, director and screenwriter. Likes to eat and drink. Works for theatre, film, radio and television. Moves and tries to move others.

Remo Rauscher

Remo Rauscher (AT) freelances in audiovisual media as an animator for commercial projects, as a projectionist in theatre, teaching hybrid animation techniques at higher schools and youth camps alike. The recent past explores hybrid aspects of visual performances, as coding and VJ-ing demanded deeper dialogues with many disciplines of likewise performing arts.
remorauscher.at