Like every year, Ars Electronica Animation Festival On Tour showcases recent artistic trends in the field of digital animation. The selection, compiled of the submissions at Prix Ars Electronica 2024 in its recently renewed category New Animation Art demonstrates the transformations and dynamics occurring within the field of animation. Even more strongly than previous years, one could observe the tendency of many creators to utilize specific tools (such as Stable Diffusion, Midjourney, DALL-E, Sora, Runway, or ChatGPT) in a self-reflexive manner enabling critical commentary on the socio-technical nature of these systems and their impact on our society.  Moreover, we noticed that a remarkable one-third of the submissions were projects created using AI tools or centered around AI as a theme—the highest number to date.

From the nearly 900 submissions, around 45 projects were selected and showcased at Ars Electronica Animation Festival in September 2024. More than a half of them have been included in the On Tour program, and available now as four outstanding compilations: Best-Of Prix Ars Electronica, Austrian Animation, Young Animations, Science and Data Visualizations.

Full programme of Ars Electronica Animation Festival 2024

Images from Ars Electronica Animation Festival 2024

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.

Best-Of Prix Ars Electronica: New Animation Art (75min)
This Prix Ars Electronica Best-Of program includes 8 animations, 6 of which were awarded prizes in this year’s competition. The two Golden Nica winners, one Award of Distinction and three Honorary Mentions provide an excellent snapshot of the current landscape of animation art. Most of these works use novel technologies to deliver compelling socio-political commentary and make incisive reflections on pressing issues of our time: climate emergency, data surveillance, the invisible human labor that goes into training AI systems, the erosion of image credibility, the commodification of transnational education, as well as the need for fresh visions of culture, nature, and space. Two additional works enrich the program of award-winning projects, one delving into the quantum realities of our multidimensional universe, and the other unfolding a poignant tale of friendship and transformation.

• SMOKE AND MIRRORS by Beatie Wolfe (GB), 4’20’’, Golden Nica Winner
  Smoke and Mirrors is an unusual blend of music video and science visualisation. This short and poignant work emphasizes the magnitude of the climate crisis, by presenting not only scientific facts about global warming but also the dangerous ideological positions which have been denying it over the past few decades. Rising methane levels are therefore illustrated alongside historical advertising slogans employed by oil companies meant to endanger credibility of climate emergency. The visualization is based on NASA’s Blue Marble image and set to Oh My Heart, which was released as the world’s first bioplastic record by Beatie Wolfe.
  

• UNKNOWN QUANTUM OBJECTS by Alessandro Bavari (IT), 13’
  Unknown Quantum Objects is an experimental animation exploring 13 of the 64 dimensions believed to exist beyond the three established space-time dimensions. Through animation, Bavari enables us direct experience of an otherwise highly theoretical and abstract concept. He provides a visual representation of concepts that lack tangible visual forms, but can be imaginatively brought to understanding through this medium.
  

• STAINED by Jeremy Kamal (US), 2’11’’, Award of Distinction
  Stained is a short speculative CGI film depicting a utopian future where America’s landscapes are transformed by Black culture. The film follows a sensitive tea master that uses colored flora to mark territory. Based in a world where symbiotic relationships with technology allow Black Americans to transform “natural” and synthetic environments.
  

• BYE BEAR by Jan Bitzer (DE), 10’40’’
  In Bye Bear we step into a decaying 1980s motel, where a group of unusual friends gathers for one last celebration. At the heart of the party is Bear—a robot with an unusual dream: to shed its metallic shell and become a real bear. Bye Bear is a surreal story about friendship, transformation, change, and the ceremony of a long goodbye. The friends celebrate together and bid each other farewell. Bear’s transformation into a real bear reaches its conclusion on this very night.
  

• THANK YOU FOR YOUR SOUVENIR, UK! by Los (CN), 3’, Honorary Mention
  Thank you for your Souvenir, UK! shows the experience of a Chinese student who spends a year in the UK grappling with cultural displacement and a sense of non belonging. Through this deeply personal film, the artist poses an essential question: are international students valued as contributors to the system, or are they merely being exploited as resources? The film’s raw and honest portrayal will resonate with anyone who has ever felt like an outsider.
  

• UNKNOWN LABEL by Nicolas Gourault (FR), 16’ 34’’, Honorary Mention
  Unknown Label is a documentary about the experience of online micro-workers from the Global South who annotate images used to train self-driving cars. The film begins with a simple animation illustrating the process of segmentation—a crucial step in AI training where images are divided into distinct objects, such as separating cars from pedestrians or roads. This meticulous task, performed by human workers, allows AI systems to recognize and interact with their environments. The film highlights the discrimination they face, with the animated visuals evolving in complexity to mirror the complexity of the labor. The story culminates in a city-scale 3D data visualization, revealing the hidden human effort behind AI systems.
  

• WASHED OUT: “THE HARDEST PART” by Paulo Trillo (US), Golden Nica AI in ART Award
  The music video for the album “The Hardest Part” by the band Washed Out marks a groundbreaking achievement, as it is the first fully generative video created with OpenAI’s SORA text-to-video model. This is why it was awarded the Golden Nica for AI I in Art. Spanning several decades, the video begins in the early 80s and follows a young couple throughout their whole life. By embracing the hallucinatory, dreamlike qualities of SORA, the video manages to capture the fleeting and elusive nature of memories.
  

• DUCK by Rachel Maclean (GB), 16’30’’, Honorary Mention
  Duck is an unusual deepfake short film set in the iconic world of James Bond. Featuring AI-generated portrayals of Sean Connery, Marilyn Monroe, and other stars, the animation introduces the audience to a seemingly familiar, yet in fact never-before-seen reality, where the fixed definition of identity and the reliability of history and news are continuously questioned. This witty yet unsettling display of deepfake mastery is sure to leave you jaw-dropping in astonishment.

Austrian Panorama (30 min)
Austrian Panorama showcases a mix of experimental and humorous animations by artists born or based in Austria. The compilation opens on a comedic note with Annoyance by Sascha Vernik, a short animation about a pesky fly bringing chaos into a hipster’s life and thwarting his attempts to bite into a veggie wrap. A hybrid of live action, drawing, and AI, Celine Pham’s LUCID presents a mesmerizing interplay of dance, music, and neural style transfer. Verena Repar’s echoes of grief is an AI-generated personal essay that takes viewers on a phantasmagoric journey through memory, unconscious and trauma. Last but not least, Abyss, by artist duo Sophie Gartner and Neo Klinger, delivers a darkly bitter and ironic take on the apocalypse.

• ANNOYANCE by Sascha Vernik (AT), 2’22’’
• LUCID by Celine Pham (AT), 3’10’’
• ABYSS by Sophie Gartner & Neo Klinger (AT), 2’59’’
• ECHOES OF GRIEF by Verena Repar (AT), 19’13’’

Young Animations (30 min) 
Like every year, the works of talented filmmakers up to the age of 19 are celebrated in the category Young Animations. The program is a selection of short films created by young artists across Austria, who have submitted their projects to the Prix Ars Electronica 2024 in the u19-create your world category.

• LAST by Anna Bubenicek und Flora Kirnbauer, 4’52’’,
• NORMAL DAY IN JURASSIC WORLD by Maximilian Peinhaupt, 7’50’’
• HERZENSSCHWESTERN by Sara Çelen, Gloria Schauer und Julia Scheucher, 51’’
• NA2R_3LUMEN by Nea Geršak, 1’20’’
• ZEMLYANKA by Justin Casta, Maximilian Größ, Jonathan Pacher, Georgy Snegur, Christina Zsalacz, 4’44’’
• FLUTEN DER FREIHEIT by Jakob Gruber, 10’’, Golden Nica Winner u19,
• EVERLASTING END by Keno Czompo, Aaron Hager, Tobias Kogler, 1’33’’
• CONSTRUCTED IDENTITY by Sophia Scharrer, 1’58’’
• OCEANEBULA by Sophie Gartner, 1’50’’
• JUST A DREAM by Sophie Brunnmayr, 3’

Science and Data Visualizations (15 min)
Through animation, scientific concepts become more than just data – they become stories that resonate and inspire. Animation can turn complex scientific concepts into visually comprehensible narratives, making them accessible to a broad audience. From exploring the Milky Way’s center and the dynamics of stars orbiting a supermassive black hole to depicting DNA replication or the planet’s warming trends throughout time, the selected animations break down intricate scientific phenomena into coherent segments. Such graphical representations of data often unveil ‘hidden’ insights about our world, in other words, they make us aware of phenomena that develop either too slowly (climate change) or too fast (DNA replication) to be noticeable through direct experience or observation technology. Some of the selected animations take a factual, informative approach to make complex scientific concepts tangible and engaging, while others, like Golden Nica winner Smoke and Mirrors, weave scientific data into emotional narratives.

• A JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE MILKY WAY: STELLAR ORBITS AROUND ITS CENTRAL BLACK HOLE, NCSA Advanced Visualization Lab (US), 3’19’’
• DNA REPLICATION OF THE LAGGING STRAND, Peter Mindek (SK), Tobias Klein (DE) and Alfredo De Biasio (IT), 2’45’’
• FOLLOWING THE UPPER AND LOWER LIMBS OF THE AMOC, Felicia Brisc (DE) and Nuno Serra (PT), 3’45
• NASA CLIMATE SPIRAL, Mark SubbaRao (US), 30’’
• SMOKE AND MIRRORS, Beatie Wolfe (GB), 4’20’’

Credits

• The Prix Ars Electronica, organized by Ars Electronica Linz GmbH & Co KG, is made possible by support from the City of Linz.  
• Special thanks for additional support go to Austrian Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs, Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research and OeAD. 
• The Ars Electronica ANIMATION FESTIVAL 2024 is a collaboration of Ars Electronica with the University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria, Hagenberg Campus.
• The Ars Electronica ANIMATION FESTIVAL 2024 is curated by Juergen Hagler (University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria, Hagenberg Campus) and Daniela Duca De Tey (Ars Electronica).
• The Ars Electronica ANIMATION FESTIVAL 2024 ON TOUR was produced with the support of the Austrian Federal Ministry for Europe, Integration and Foreign Affairs.

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