Opening of the Vienna Digital Cultures Festival: Art meets technology!

Opening of the Vienna Digital Cultures Festival: Art meets technology!

On April 7, 2025, a new festival will celebrate its premiere in Vienna: the Vienna Digital Cultures Festival, which will take place for the first time from May 5 to 18, 2025 in the Kunsthalle Wien Karlsplatz and other locations in the city. Organized jointly by the Kunsthalle Wien and Foto Arsenal Wien, the festival has a clear focus on exploring the effects of new technologies on culture. A varied program of exhibitions, performances and discourse formats with internationally renowned artists and experts is planned under the title “Model Collapse”.

The presentation of the program and the artists will take place on April 9, 2025 at 10:00 a.m. in the Kunsthalle Wien Karlsplatz. Important personalities from the cultural and art scene, including Veronica Kaup-Hasler (City Councilor for Culture and Science), Wolfgang Kuzmits (Managing Director of the Stadt Wien Kunst GmbH), and Michelle Cotton (Artistic Director Kunsthalle Wien) will be present at this press conference. Those interested can register until April 8th presse@kunsthallewien.at Register for the press conference.

Technology and art – a new interaction

The combination of digital technology and art has become increasingly important since the 1980s. For example, in the case of the VR installation “Atmospheric Forest” by the Latvian artist duo Rasa Smite and Raitis Smits, which allows visitors to immerse themselves in 3D scans of a digitized forest. Such works reflect the impact of technological change and show how digital technologies can become extensions of the human experience.

The festival also covers topics that are currently shaping society, such as artificial intelligence (AI) and its influence on human emotions. According to reporting by Deutschlandfunk, artists like Mario Klingemann use AI to create new visual worlds and question the relationship between humans and machines. The “Real Feelings” exhibition, which addresses the challenges of AI in analyzing human emotions, offers an interesting perspective.

Social debates and digital art

The Vienna Digital Cultures Festival will not only highlight the artistic possibilities of new technologies, but also the ethical and social questions associated with them. The discussion about humanoid robots in everyday life and their influence on interpersonal relationships will also play a role. Sabine Himmelsbach, who is intensively involved in the development of media art, emphasizes that digital works of art provide important impetus for social debates.

At a time when technologies are omnipresent and shape society, the festival promises a space for creative engagement with the digital challenges of our time. An event that will appeal not only to art lovers, but also to those interested in the intersection between technology and culture. Information about further details about the festival and the artists will be published in the coming weeks.

For additional information about the development of media art, we recommend taking a look at the website Deutschlandfunks. There it is clearly explained how profoundly technologies influence all of our lives and what opportunities they offer for art.