One of the world’s largest media art stages, Ars Electronica festival celebrated its 40th anniversary in the city of Linz with the most extensive program in its history. Five full days packed with digital music, creativity, art, technology and innovation, all in the same place.

Ars Electronica Linz is an Austrian cultural, educational and scientific institute active in the field of new media art, founded in Linz in 1979. Every year it organizes a festival that gathers thousands of artists, technologists and scientists for experimentation, evaluation and reinvention.

This year’s theme of the festival was “Out of the Box – The Midlife Crisis of the Digital Revolution,” exploring the evolution of digitalization, where we stand today and how things will continue. Award-winning experts attended the five-day event, which welcomed more than 100.000 people.

The festival always exerted a public presence in Linz, mounting large-scale open-air projects and holding lectures, discussions and workshops in a wide range of public venue. Activities happened across town, with many based at the Ars Electronica Center, which houses the Museum of the Future.

Day one of the festival was “History Day,” with a set of events focused on Ars Electronica history to learn about the organization of the festival. Later in the day the Award Ceremony honored this year’s winners of the Prix Ars Electronica and the STARTS Prize.

This year’s grand prizes were given to 300,000 km/s, a city planning initiative in the city of Barcelona using open and big data, and to Project Alias by Bjørn Karmann and Tore Knudsen, which aims to give users more control over their intelligent assistants, both in terms of customization and privacy.

The festival then continued with “Innovation Day,” with inspiration as the main objective. The Innovation Forum hosted business leaders from the region and there were also conferences in line with the festival’s objective of reviewing the digital revolution

Day three was focused on artificial intelligence music and public involvement. The Create Your World Festival took place at PostCity, with numerous open labs and exhibition centers, while the Assistants Conference focused on social sustainability. The AI x Music festival closed the day.

The fourth day was marked by European projects and visions. The European Platform for Digital Humanism took place alongside the Ars Electronica Art Thinking School and the Future Innovation Summit.

Music Monday closed the Ars Electronica festival. A daylong tour full of talks, performances, projects and installations on the theme of sound and music culminating in the evening in a piano concert by Maki Namekawa and Dennis Russell Davies, putting a musical and fun ending to five days packed with activities.

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