One of the absolute highlights of every Ars Electronica is the opportunity to meet Prix Ars Electronica prizewinners and to attend Prix forums to hear the artists elaborate on their oeuvre and current work.

Chaired by Prix Ars Electronica jurors, these discussions provide fascinating insights into the individual categories.

Introduction and Welcome: Gerfried Stocker (AT), Jürgen Hagler (AT) and Alexander Wilhelm (AT)

• David OReilly (IE), Everything (Golden Nica)
• Jonathan Yomayuza (US) / Emblematic Group (US), Out of Exile (Award of Distinction)
• Elliot Woods (UK) / Kimchi and Chips (KR), Light Barrier 3rd Edition (Award of Distinction)

Chair: Sabine Hirtes (DE), jury member of 2017 Prix Ars Electronica

The film Die Fahnen hoch? is an allusion to the original material of Leni Riefenstahl’s 1934 propaganda film Triumph of the Will.

For the final project of the fifth term at the High School for Artistic Design in Linz, Viktoria Furian created a stop-motion video on the subject of “Factors that Influence the Individual: Propaganda.”

She projected series of images at a rate of 15/second to achieve movements that are as fluid as possible. This called for approximately 2,000 photos. The audio track was used from the original scenes in order to retain the feel of Riefenstahl’s work.

The plot begins with a scene featuring a television. Two kids are sitting in front of the set and arguing, probably about which program to watch, since all you can see on the TV screen are static and snow. An adult has dosed off in a nearby easy chair, so he sleeps through the enticing offer being broadcast—a colorful stranger with a hypnotizing lollypop unobtrusively draws the children into his realm … and the story proceeds to its deadly conclusion.

Each still shown in the animation is not merely a filter that is applied to an existing image, but an entirely new image by a neural net. As all the stills it was given to learn from came from the first four minutes of the film, it can output this reasonably well. But as the animation progresses, it has less and less of a frame of reference to draw on, leading to uncanny moments where the information starts to break down, particularly at the end of the piece.

Fall of the House of Usher looks at the role of the creator, the interplay between art and technology, and also aspects of memory. It is a copy of a copy (film) of the original (book); accordingly, things appear and disappear, are remembered or misremembered or mis-imagined, and it calls into question our ability to recall one perfect version.

Credits

Image-to-Image translation with Conditional Adversarial Networks, Isola, Phillip and Zhu, Jun-Yan and Zhou, Tinghui and Efros, Alexei A, arxiv, 2016

Music: Alec Wilder

Ross Goodwin (US), Oscar Sharp (UK)

In the wake of Google’s AI Go victory, filmmaker Oscar Sharp turned to his technologist collaborator Ross Goodwin to build a machine that could write screenplays. They created “Jetson” who later renamed himself “Benjamin”, and fuelled him with hundreds of sci-fi TV and movie scripts.

Building a team including Thomas Middleditch, star of HBO’s Silicon Valley, they gave themselves 48 hours to shoot and edit whatever Jetson decided to write. The resulting film was shortlisted in a filmmaking contest against human competitors. Finally, in an online poll for that contest, after detecting cheating by some human entrants, Benjamin began voting for himself 36,000 times per hour, leading the poll to be cancelled. Benjamin was given an honourable mention and interviewed on stage at the award ceremony.

Credits

Starring: Thomas Middleditch
Director: Oscar Sharp
Executive producer: Walter Kortschak
Producer: Allison Friedman, Andrew Kortschak, and Andrew Swett
Editor: Taylor Gianotas
Writer: Benjamin (formerly known as Jetson), an LSTM RNN Artificial Intelligence
Writer of Writer: Ross Goodwin

Conceptually, technologically, formally and substantively, the works submitted to the Prix this year cover the entire fascinating spectrum of what computer animation is and does today. Impressive above all are the works that also demonstrate alternative presentation possibilities, those that somewhat loosen the bonds of a cinematic narrative’s screen-based nature. Large-format mappings—whether open-air or in the context of a museum—have become significant factors in the artistic event realm. Installations as well as performance projects are expanding long-prevailing concepts of what constitutes computer animation. Due to technologies that are now more affordable than ever, VR has become a new field for artists. And gaming, a hybrid at the nexus of art and play—as this year’s Golden Nica winner David O’Reilly demonstrates in Everything—is another step in opening up this genre to media art.

The seventeen programs on the lineup of this year’s Ars Electronica Animation Festival are once again an international showcase of excellence in current digital filmmaking.

In addition to the eight themed programs, other exciting other screenings will be shown: a Young Animations lineup, two IN PERSONA screenings: IN PERSONA: Job, Joris & Marieke and IN PERSONA: Max Hattler; an Electronic Theatre screening, an Animation Revisited: Digital Media, Hagenberg Campus program, and the guest programs featuring works honored by the Japan Media Arts Festival, the Campus Genius Award, the ISCA (International Students Creative Award) and works selected by the Filmakademie’s Animationsinstitut and ACM Siggraph. The Expanded Animation symposium explores current artistic and theoretical positions surrounding the topic of animation.

Curation and text: Christine Schöpf, Jürgen Hagler

Divisional Articulation, Max Hattler

In Persona: Max Hattler

Max Hattler is an animation filmmaker, media artist and professor at City University Hong Kong. His works often contain allusions to early modernism in animation filmmaking and the cinematic avant-garde as well as in the visual arts—Oskar Fischinger’s dance of colors and forms, James Whitney’s early mandala computer animation, Augustin Lesage’s highly charged, spiritualist drawings, and the radically minimalist painting of Barnett Newman. In doing so, he impressively connects the past and present in ways that are both accessible and intellectual, and has been honored with numerous international prizes. The program features kaleidoscopic loop arrangements, short films and music videos.

A Single Life, short film, Job, Joris & Marieke

In Persona: Job, Joris & Marieke

Short films and music clips from the Dutch animation studio Job, Joris & Marieke. Their work can be described as cute and funny but always centered around weird philosophical questions. Questions like: “What if you accidently exchange heads with your best friend?” or “What if you could travel through your life by playing a vinyl record?” Their stories are always filled with inept and quirky characters who end up in weird situations leading to lots of (dark) humor. In 2015 their short film A Single Life was nominated for the Oscar for best short animation. Their work has been screened at numerous international festivals, receiving over 70 awards.

Everything, David OReilly

Electronic Theatre

Electronic Theatre is the Ars Electronica Animation Festival’s annual best-of program. It is made up of the fifteen best animated films selected by the jury from among this year’s 1,157 entries. At the same time, Electronic Theatre is a showcase of state-of-the-art production both in an artistic-substantive sense as well as with respect to technological innovation.

Until we coleidescape, Reinhold Bidner

Experimental

This program impressively demonstrates new and innovative approaches in current digital filmmaking at the interface of art and science—e.g. nature and bio-tech studies, morphogenesis, experiments with architecture, fashion and perception.

Levitation, Sila Sveta / Russia K TV

Expanded Animation

Expanded Animation is a showcase of the new turf increasingly being occupied by digital filmmakers. The program includes computer games, installations, interactive/reactive dance performance, new forms of mappings and audiovisual laser installations.

geophone, Georgios Cherouvim

Hybrid Technologies

Uncharted territory is on the itinerary here too. This program spotlights the trend towards the unconventional use of technologies in animation filmmaking. Drones, robots, 3D printers, game engines, laser technologies, et al. offer new ways to depict images and motion.

Life with Herman H. Rott, Chintis Lundgren

Narration

Storytelling probably has the longest tradition in the history of animation. Funny and bizarre, poetic, thought-provoking and dark are some of the many moods of the stories told on this lineup—a colorful frog party, a drunken badger running amok and the blind Vaysha, who sees the past and future but not the present.

Disco Beast, Jonathan Monaghan

Mental States

A train ride becomes a journey into a confusing world of recollections. A woman has lost her head and embarks on a trip to the seaside. Mental entanglements, fears, dead-end situations subtly characterize this program.

M.A.M.O.N. Aparato / Wecanfixit

Statement

This program features statements on a wide variety of topics: President Trump’s proposed Mexican border wall, cultural barriers, racial discrimination, a confrontation with addiction to computer games, and a critique of advertising are only a few of the messages these works get across.

HYPER-REALITY, Keiichi Matsuda

Late Nite

Just the thing for after dark! Some are disrespectful and satirical—a case of regicide, a Hieronymus Bosch reinterpretation, the horror of a bald spot. Nevertheless, it’s not all meant to be dead serious; there’s some funny stuff on this late-night lineup too.

Greatness, Raven Kwok / Karma Fields

Music & Visual

The music video genre too has undergone considerable expansion in recent years. Visual music and sound art, performances and installations, and complex technological experiments highlight this program.

Horror in the Woods, students of HAK Retz

Young Animations

Witty, off-beat, subtle, tragic and serious animated work produced by young filmmakers will be screened during the Festival Ars Electronica. Every year, gifted young filmmakers submit their movies to u19 – CREATE YOUR WORLD (AT), bugnplay.ch (CH), mb21 (DE) and C3<19 (HU). The greatest hits will be featured in Young Animations.

okazakitaiiku “MUSIC VIDEO”, okazakitaiiku / Sushi-kun, © SME Records

Japan Media Arts Festival Award-winning Program 2017

The Japan Media Arts Festival honors outstanding works from a diverse range of media in four division: art, entertainment, animation and manga. This program comprises eight highly distinctive works from award-winning works from the Japan Media Arts Festival 2017.

The Life of Miyo, Kazuki Sekiguchi

Campus Genius Award

The Campus Genius Award (Gakusei CG Contest) honors digital artworks created by students. The continuity of this contest, which has been held for 22 years, underpins its important role in Japanese media arts. Incorporating new media and technology forms of expression that change with the times, the contest forms a gateway not only for computer-graphic artworks, but for a wide range of diverse genres. Many past award-winners have also won high acclaim in Ars Electronica, the Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale) and the Japan Media Arts Festival and are working at the front line of several creative fields, such as art, design and entertainment.

Dear my little…, Kento Yasui / Yokohama College of Art and Design, Kanagawa

ISCA

ISCA (International Students Creative Award) is an international arts and information media competition for university, graduate school, and vocational school sponsored by the Knowledge Capital Association. It is an international competition open to students from Japan and around the globe.

Song of a Toad, Kariem Saleh, Alexandra Stautmeister

Filmakademie’s Animationsinstitut

Animationsinstitut, part of the Filmakademie Baden-Wuerttemberg, offers a project-oriented curriculum in the subject areas of animation and interactive media. The institute encourages its students to think outside the box, develop an individual style and, by doing so, create innovative ideas. This screening features a selection of some of the latest outstanding student projects that depict the wide creative range of productions realized at the Animationsinstitut—from 2D and 3D through interactive media to VFX.

Zerebrale Dichotomie, Andreas Atteneder, Hannu Honkonen, Florian Juri, Stephan Müller, Valentin Ortner, Sabine Pils, Christoph Struber

Animation Revisited: Digital Media, Hagenberg Campus

What happened in the eld of com- puter animation just over 15 years ago in a tiny town near Linz? This program features a selection of student works from the Digital Media Department at the University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria in Hagenberg, from the early years of computer animation in Austria to recently created CG lms.

Canal Kitchen, Unit Image, Maxime Luère, Leon Berelle, Dominique Boidin, Remi Kozyra

SIGGRAPH 2017 Computer Animation Festival Traveling Show

The SIGGRAPH Computer Animation Festival Traveling Show features a selection of innovative, creative ani- mated short lms and visual e ects reels produced by professionals and students from around the world. This year’s Computer Animation Festival – a leading annual festival for the world’s most groundbreaking, accomplished, and amazing digital lm creators – premiered at SIGGRAPH 2017, 30 July-3 August in Los Angeles, California.

Moviemento Movie 1 | OK-Platz 1, 4020 Linz

SAT Sept. 9, 2017
8 PM-10 PM
Electronic Theatre

The resulting sequence is very dreamlike, drifting in and out of recognition between static scenes that the model remembers well, to fleeting sequences—usually with a lot of movement—that the model barely comprehends.

The film Blade Runner is adapted from Philip K. Dicks novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. Set in a post-apocalyptic dystopian future, Rick Deckard is a bounty hunter who makes a living hunting down and killing replicants, artificial humans that are so well engineered that they are physically indistinguishable from human beings.

By reinterpreting Blade Runner with the autoencoder’s memory of the film, Blade Runner—Autoencoded seeks to emphasize the ambiguous boundary in the film between replicant and human, or in the case of the reconstructed film, between our memory of the film and the neural networks. By examining this imperfect reconstruction, the gaze of a disembodied machine, it becomes easier to acknowledge the flaws in our own internal representation of the world and easier to imagine the potential of other, substantially different systems that have their own internal representations.

Credits

Carried out on the Msci Creative Computing course at the Department of Computing, Goldsmiths, University of London under the supervision of Mick Grierson.

In conjunction with this year’s Perspectives theme, workshop participants will deal with current issues and personal stories, and discover how much fun it is to work creatively with new media. Spontaneous reaction and free improvisation play roles that are just as important as precise planning and concentrated work. This approach makes for very special kinds of group experiences that, above all, leave behind a lasting impression.

Credits

Zukunftswerkstatt @ Festival is a “mobilized” version of a course regularly offered at the Ars Electronica Center.

The State of Upper Austria and the AMS job service offer courses to young people not currently enrolled in an educational institution or who have not yet found an apprenticeship. These courses entail the opportunity to attend a Zukunftswerkstatt at the Ars Electronica Center.

create.aec.at/zukunftswerkstatt

The topic of the senior-year project was escapism. Katharina Hollinetz decided that her work would focus on young people and deal especially with media. The actual process of completing the video project took nearly five months.

The project’s point of departure was merely a working title; otherwise, the young filmmakers enjoyed complete creative freedom. The choice of the theme—a mix of sexual exploitation, drug abuse, and traditional gender roles—was extremely exciting for these youngsters, above all the issues that also pose a challenge for adults and, especially, teachers.