A collaboration between Ars Electronica and the University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria Hagenberg Campus, curated by Daniela Duca De Tey and Juergen Hagler
The 2023 Ars Electronica Animation Festival is a diverse showcase that invites spectators to discover current artistic productions in the field of digital animation. The selection has been mostly compiled of the submissions at Prix Ars Electronica 2023, which shifted its focus this year from “Computer Animation” to the landscape of “New Animation Art”. This meant it welcomed artists whose work expands on the cutting-edge intersection of animation, art and technology, approaching visual expression with unabashed experimentation.
Several exciting programs, taking place at Ars Electronica Center, will give witness to the diversity of this renewed category, not only in terms of storytelling techniques, conceptual explorations and technological innovation, but also in terms of their commitment to social change and new political imaginaries.
From the nearly 1,120 submissions, we have selected around 30 projects to be shown at Ars Electronica Animation Festival, featuring a broad spectrum of techniques: AI-generated images, photogrammetry, cinematic deepfakes, scientific and game simulations, real-time graphics and many others. The diverse selection invites new ways of thinking about how we experience the digital-virtual-real world we live in.
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Animation Festival: Electronic Theatre
Alice Brygo (FR), Ayoung Kim (KR), Bassam Issa (IE), Rebecca Merlic (HR/AT), Laen Sanches (FR), Ruini Shi (CN), Sven Windzus (DE)
Electronic Theatre is the annual best-of program, a compilation of outstanding animations chosen by the Prix jury from the submitted works in the “New Animation Art” category. It is a diverse showcase, blending video, performance, game simulations and AI-generated imagery engaging new ways of thinking about how we experience the digital-virtual-real world we live in.
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Animation Festival: AI & Human. Who Owns the Truth?
Nikita Diakur (DE), Operator (US/DE), Theresa Reiwer (DE), Ruini Shi (CN), Antanas Skučas (LT) & Julius Zubavičius (LT)
AI & Human. Who Owns the Truth? is a unique showcase approaching topical disputes of our time, from data ownership and ethics of data harvesting to authorship in the age of AI, love in time of crypto, deepfakes and image credibility.
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Animation Festival: Data, Bodies, Space
Jonathan Armour (IE), Ina Conradi (US/SG) and Mark Chavez (US), Maxime Chudeau (FR) Jieyuan Huang (CN/AT/DE), Bassam Issa (IE), Junha Kim (KR), Dorian Rigal Minuit (FR), Ryotaro Sato (JP), Wang & Söderström (SE)
Data, Bodies, Space shows an intriguing mix of different animation art practices, dealing with the “glitches” of our digitality-virtuality-reality condition. From nightmarish dystopian scenarios to speculative more-than-human ecologies, you are transported into a sensuous imaginary cyberspace, filled with hybrid beings, ambiguous heroes, data bodies and networked selves.
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Animation Festival: Austrian Panorama
Reinhold Bidner (AT), Daniel Denzer (AT/DE), Siegfried A. Fruhauf (AT), Claudia Larcher (AT), Marius Oelsch (AT), Anna Mutschlechner-Dean (AT), Herwig Scherabon (AT/DE), Rita Weiss (AT), Alessa Wolfram (AT)
Austrian Panorama highlights recent animation works of local artists. The selected shorts offer a meditative-poetic, inquisitive, and sometimes even humorous glimpse at more than human worlds, in which the organic and the digital are inseparably intertwined.
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Animation Festival: Young Animations
A collaboration between Ars Electronica and OeAD, curated by Sirikit Amann (AT)
A collaboration between Ars Electronica and OeAD, curated by Sirikit Amann (AT). Like every year, the work of talented filmmakers up to the age of nineteen is celebrated in the category Young Animation. The program is a selection of short films created by young artists across Austria.
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Animation Festival: transmediale Guest Program
Alice Bucknell (US/UK), Anna Engelhardt (RU/UK), Mark Cinkevich (BY/PL), Sahej Rahal (IN), Natasha Tontey (ID)
transmediale festival Berlin presents a series of video works developed by the festival’s artists-in-residence. examining the legacy of technocolonial violence and the blurred lines between reality and digital worlds. Onset depicts a demon’s exploration of synthetic environments created from satellite images of military bases.
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Animation Festival Special Night
Animation Festival Special Night is an entertaining mix-match showcase blending shorts from the different screening programs of this year’s Animation Festival. The screenings will run in parallel with Futurelab Night Performances. The night will continue with a joint celebration by Ars Electronica Futurelab & Ars Electronica Animation Festival at Stadtwerkstatt Linz.
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Immersive Animation Lab
Pedro Harres (BR), Fanni Fazakas (HU), Milad Tousi (IR), Alexander Hödlmoser (AT) and Leonhard Schnaitl (AT)
This year’s Ars Electronica Festival marks the evolution of a new Prix Ars category, New Animation Art. One of the adaptations that the field of animation has experienced involves a higher degree of immersion. Partly due to developments from virtual reality (VR) technologies, many animated works not only surround the viewer, but also allow for…
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Delivery Dancer’s Sphere
Golden Nica for New Animation Art
The algorithm-centric, hypervigilant economy of platform labour urges delivery drivers to defy space and time to meet the demands of fastest deliveries. Ernst Mo rushes with the speed of light through a labyrinth of endlessly shifting paths in techno-futuristic Seoul.
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Meet the Artist: Miwa Matreyek
Miwa Matreyek (Golden Nica for Computer Animation 2020) will be presenting a shortened documentation video of her 2020 performance work, Infinitely Yours. She creates live performances integrating her kaleidoscopic animations with her body in shadow from behind the screen.
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Meet the Artist: Akiko Nakayama
Akiko Nakayama will comment on the side of video excerpts from previous performances giving insight into her technique called Alive Painting. The audience will witness her vivacious transformations of various mediums and colors and engage in a conversation about the curious relationship between painting, performance and animation art.
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Meet the Artist: Rebecca Merlic
GLITCHBODIES (Honorary Mention for New Animation Art 2023) is an interactive game and multiplatform project encompassing new forms of feminism, LGBTQ+ and Drag transformations. While playing the game, participants become part of an interactive digital space.