Ars Electronica Animation Festival

Ars Electronica is a platform working at the intersection of art, technology and society through organizing exhibitions, educational programmes and research projects focused on the future of our societies. Founded in 1979 in Linz as a festival it has since expanded to include a laboratory, an award and a museum dedicated to the study and promotion of media arts and digital culture. 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. Several exciting programs 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 1,120 submissions, around 30 projects were selected for Ars Electronica Animation Festival, featuring a broad spectrum of styles and techniques: AI-generated images, cinematic deep fakes, hybrids between games and animations, animated documentaries and experimental-abstract works. This diverse selection invites new ways of thinking about how we experience the digital-virtual-real world we live in.