Introduction
Ars Electronica is an international festival dedicated to art, technology, and society, held annually in Linz, Austria, since 1979, exploring the intersections of the digital world and considering its ethical and cultural implications. Over time, it has transcended its festival format to become one of the world’s most influential platforms, establishing itself as an idea lab, discussion forum, and space for experimentation and research that continually challenges our understanding of the future and the role of digital creation in an increasingly technology-mediated world.
The 2025 edition, held from 3 to 7 September, introduced a provocative “PANIC yes/no” theme that challenged attendees with the dichotomy inherent in our relationship with today’s rapid advances (see a brief reel here). With 122,000 visits and the participation of 1,472 artists, scientists, and activists from 83 countries, the festival encourages us to consider whether the appropriate response to the challenges posed by artificial intelligence, climate collapse, and social reconfiguration should be panic – understood as a collective alarm driving action – or, conversely, a calm acceptance and strategic approach. Through artistic installations, lectures, performances, or technological prototypes, this edition has fostered an urgent dialogue on how to navigate a disruptive present with a critical eye, seeking new paradigms beyond emotional reactions or plain resignation.
Part of the Mosaic team visited Linz, and gathered insights from some of the most significant Spanish creators who appeared in this edition of Ars Electronica. Given their busy schedules, we especially want to thank them for their generosity and enthusiastic response to our invitation. We asked them about their participation in this forum and their notable festival works, and here’s what they’ve shared with us:
César Escudero
Bio
César Escudero Andaluz is an artist focused on digital culture, interface critique and their social and political effects. César’s research addresses issues such as data surveillance, algorithm governance, and tactical interfaces. His practices combine interfaces, electronics, images, interactive facilities and robotics with critical design, media archaeology and digital humanities. His works have been exhibited at international e-art events, museums and galleries, including Ars Electronica, ZKM Center for Art and Media, Nam June Paik Museum, Media Art Biennale in Wroclaw, or the Science Gallery Detroit among others.
What was your participation in the festival?
I have participated in Theme exhibition with my piece F.U.C.K.- ID. Free Universal Cut Kit for Internet Dissidence, a self-contained device moved by sea currents that is capable of cutting underwater Internet cables. It is available on my website for free download in .STL format for later 3D printing. F.U.C.K.- ID serves as a critical design concept to shed light on control and surveillance issues. IT visualizes the sociopolitical effects of physical Internet infrastructure and gives users the ability to decide on their data and privacy. At its core, F.U.C.K.-ID is an internet stop button. In addition, for this exhibition I have extended this project with the map “The fall of the fiber optic control, power and paranoia” which shows all the documented outages that have occurred in the Internet submarine cables.
Which piece would you highlight from this edition?
The Void in Resonance (Jerónimo Reyes-Retana) video installation documenting a Mexican village, their customs and lives as fishermen, and how they are altered by the SpaceX company, which, across the border, only five kilometers away, is building and testing the largest rocket ever built. The documentary focuses on how vibrations and noises are affecting the Mexican natural ecosystem and, as a result, its inhabitants.
Domestic Data Streamers
Bio
Domestic Data Streamers is a creative collective based in Barcelona that works at the intersection of data, art, and storytelling. Established in 2013, it combines design, research, and technology to turn complex data into human experiences that evoke emotion and collective memory. The team partners with cultural, scientific, and social organizations to create spaces for shared reflection, always aiming to translate data into stories that encourage participation and collective discussion.
What was your participation in the festival?
In this edition of Ars Electronica, we at Domestic Data Streamers have presented several memories collected within the Memories Sintètiques project. The installation aimed to highlight two pilots that demonstrate technology’s capacity to rebuild and preserve personal and collective stories.
The first pilot was created in Brazil, in the Bom Retiro neighbourhood of São Paulo, an area characterised by a strong immigrant community. There, the project examined the experiences of migrants, gathering excerpts from their stories to reconstruct a historic and collective memory of the neighbourhood. This initiative showed how personal memories can become a powerful tool for understanding a community’s social and cultural network.
The second pilot was developed in the United Arab Emirates, involving patients diagnosed with Alzheimer’s or dementia. Through personal memory reconstruction, the initiative opened new possibilities for exploring how technology can aid in recovering fragmented identities and strengthening the emotional bonds of those affected by neurodegenerative diseases.
In addition to the installations, we hosted two live memory reconstruction sessions featuring Christa Sommerer and Derrick de Kerckhove. These encounters led to an enriching dialogue about the relationship between memory, technology and creativity.
During Ars Electronica 2025 we received a mention in the S+T+ARTS Prize and the 2025 Award for Digital Humanity.
Which piece would you highlight from this edition?
We were especially attracted by AI War Cloud Database, Tracing the Invisible Lines Between Devices and Drones (Sarah Ciston), which maps the infrastructures of artificial intelligence from our phones to the industry of war. A work that exposes the less visible side of AI and its connections with the global economy and belic conflicts.
Fernando Fernández
Bio
Passionate about research at the intersection of art, nature, and technology, he creates projects that blend sound, digital art, interactive installations, and mixed realities. Since 2014, he has designed and coordinated technology initiatives with humanitarian organizations in the Sahel and Middle East, including countries such as Niger, Mali, Mauritania, Lebanon, and Palestine. Over the past eight years, he has worked as a trainer and mentor in collaborative prototyping laboratories at MediaLab Matadero, Teatros del Canal, Tabakalera (Donosti), and MolinoLab.
He is the founder of MolinoLab.org, a rural creation and experimentation laboratory, and an active member of groups such as LiveCodeMad, Interactivas MedialabPrado and Collective Mind. His latest projects can be viewed at https://b1tdreamer.xyz.
What was your participation in the festival?
My participation in Ars Electronica 2025 encompassed three projects. Firstly, I collaborated on the assembly of Computational Compost, a work by Marina Otero produced at Tabakalera (Donosti) in 2023. This prototype reflects on the high energy consumption of data centres and explores how their surpluses can be harnessed to create an environment where earthworms transform organic matter into vermicompost. Additionally, I worked alongside Santiago Morilla and Joaku de Sotavento on The Ritual Song of Fungal Humus, a piece that converts the electrical impulses generated by fungi into generative soundscapes, opening new opportunities for dialogue between living organisms and creative processes. My third contribution was the presentation of Sinfonía biótica, interspecies creative ecosystems, a virtual reality experience that uses electrical signals from living organisms to generate a dynamic immersive work. With this project, apart from sharing the ongoing research, I aim to connect and engage with people with similar interests and foster collaboration opportunities while growing a common network . Moreover, Ars Electronica provides a valuable chance to showcase the work of MolinoLab, the artistic and cultural creation space located in western Salamanca, within the international Creative Europe circuits, to find partners and allies for future initiatives.
Which piece would you highlight from this edition?
It is difficult to pick a favourite from so many pieces, but the one I spent the most time on was Model Collapse (Tetem). An immersive world-building project that explores the landscape behind generative AI. It features a series of cyber sculptures, interconnected relics, and a command frontend where you can interact and research the lore of this universe. A reflection on the role of AI in extracting resources and data.
Marc Vilanova
Bio
Marc Vilanova is a sound and visual artist based in Barcelona. His works take the form of expanded sculptures that foster a dialogue between sound, light, and movement. Through technological and material experimentation, his practice relates to acoustic ecology, post-humanism, and the threshold of perception . Its intimate and sensory environments invite deep listening as a form of environmental awareness, encouraging tuning with the beyond-human world.
What was your participation in the festival?
In this edition of Ars Electronica 2025, I had the privilege to participate for the second year in a row at the Bunker theme exhibition, which is the central showcase of Post City, the hub of the festival.
This time, I presented Phonos, an audio sculpture composed of 208 recycled speakers, each restored, stripped of its original membrane, and reprogrammed to receive a unique infrasound frequency. Infrasounds, which are below the hearing threshold, are vibrations that, despite being invisible and often ignored, shape ecosystems and influence the well-being of humans and more-than-humans. Although still a poorly researched and barely regulated field, these low-frequency sounds are a crucial part of the planetary acoustic environment.
The piece explores this inaudible dimension from the mechanical fragility of the speakers themselves. Too small to project these frequencies into the air, the devices reveal their physical strain: the coils vibrate, the membranes twitch and shake, and the mechanisms squeal. An algorithm inspired by collective animal behaviour arranges these movements into a constantly shifting polyrhythm, a mosaic of tremor and buzzing that never repeats exactly the same. The result is a sculpture that feels both monumental and intimate, a large machine that breathes and pulsates like a living organism.
Despite the monumental scale of the installation, Phonos invites us to engage with it, to experience it intimately and listen attentively. The piece creates a shared space where the public can attune to these invisible vibrations and become aware of the relationships we establish with the sound worlds that surround and sustain us. It is an invitation to listen with the body, an exercise of acoustic empathy that invites us to care for and recognize the significance of those sounds that, although inaudible, shape our world experience.
Which piece would you highlight from this edition?
One of the works that particularly caught my attention was David Bowen’s tele-present wind (Mars wind version), a field of dry grass stems held by two engines that move them according to the data collected by the Perseverance rover wind sensor on Mars. I was impressed by the simplicity, delicacy, and elegance with which it transforms and visualizes this data. Outside the showrooms, the highlight of the festival was undoubtedly the live performance of Maria Arnal’s AMA, with a wonderful stage setting.
Maria Arnal
Bio
Maria Arnal is a singer-songwriter. She is one of the most recognizable and disruptive voices in Spain’s contemporary music landscape. Based in Barcelona, she combines her role as a songmaker, crossing pop, electronics and traditional polyphonic music, with projects that experiment with sound, technology and art.
Today, she explores the possibilities of artificial intelligence-generated synthetic voice models as an S+T+Arts grant-holder , working on a project with the Spanish National Supercomputing Centre, while she composed her next album, which will be her first solo LP .
What was your participation in the festival?
I introduced AMA, a performance that fuses voice, body and artificial intelligence from a feminist perspective. The project reflects on vocal sovereignty and the separation between body and sound. Performed in collaboration with research centres and five dancers, it uses synthetic voices created from my own voice that are modulated through movement, resulting in a lively and ever-changing choral expression. AMA is my first solo job.
Which piece would you highlight from this edition?
Phonos by Marc Vilanova. I appreciate the tension generated between Marc’s sculptural, large, abundant, and maximalist attributes – so to speak – and its physical, mechanical and sound ability, which is so subtle and delicate. I value that it is a sound piece that requires a lot of silence for us to truly grasp its sound, and I find this aspect particularly compelling from a musical composition perspective. I also really like that all the recycled material, that could almost be considered trash, still has a use, although possibly being very old devices.
Mario Santamaría
Bio
Mario Santamaría is an artist based in Barcelona whose work focuses on the embodiment of computational protocols, performing actions such as physically travelling to his website and retracing the journey of data; going out for a beer through the city as a Google algorithm; or founding a tour operator based on the physical infrastructure of the Internet. He is a teacher at Elisava University in Barcelona and Commissioner of the Yami-Ichi Internet at CCCB and Matadero Madrid. His work has been exhibited internationally at venues such as ZKM Karlsruhe, WKV Stuttgart, MACBA Barcelona, CENART Mexico, Arebyte London, Les Rencontres d’Arles and C/O Berlin.
What was your participation in the festival?
My work, Emerald Black Latency, has been nominated for the S+T+ARTS Prize. The project begins with the Medusa submarine cable system, an 8,700 km submarine fibre-optic telecommunications infrastructure planned for 2026, designed to enhance connectivity in the Mediterranean and connect Europe with North Africa. The project takes as a reference a 7 km stretch between the coast of Sant Adrià del Besòs (Barcelona), where one of the landing points is situated, and the Balearic Sea. This segment, documented in official reports, is reproduced on Google’s global map, incorporating studio-generated images viewable in Street View mode. Through this process, a blend of reality and fiction is created, simulating the impossible experience of walking over a fibre-optic cable, which can be less than 1 mm thick.
Which piece would you highlight from this edition?
Total Refusal’s World at Stake (Susanna Flock, Adrian Jonas Haim, and Jona Kleinlein). Well installed in the postal building’s basement area with three large-format screens. A hypnotic piece about performance, identity, and catastrophe, which blows up while installed in a festival setting with large audiences.
Mónica Rikić
Bio
Monica Rikić (Barcelona, 1986) is an electronic artist whose practice centres on creating electronic objects and crafting robots as tools for collective critical reflection. Her work has been showcased at festivals and leading centres such as Ars Electronica, the Biennial Manifesta, ISEA, or Sónar, among others. She has received the National Culture Award of Catalonia, and for over ten years, her projects have been exhibited at national and international institutions and festivals.
What was your participation in the festival?
I led a workshop based on her research with Somoure. In her workshop/performance/talk she used the act of feeding as a metaphor to explore how we might live with technology in the future. Instead of cooking food, the “recipe” involved a food-feeding robot built collaboratively with the workshop participants. The attendees jointly discussed what this tool should look like. The space was arranged like a kitchen, with kitchen equipment combined with electronics. Participants brought the process to life through their discussions and decisions about prototyping.
Which piece would you highlight from this edition?
Requiem for an exit (Thomas Kvam and Frode Oldereid), winner of the prestigious Golden Nica at Expanded Animation. “I am fascinated by both its theme and the impact this enormous, robotic head with a projection of a speaking face has on the viewer. I appreciate the way it addresses the criticism of the present times in its speech. The transformation and mechanical presence strongly resonate with me, aligning with the interests of my own artistic practice”.
Playmodes
Bio
Playmodes is a duo of digital artisans. Formed in the fields of graphic design, musical composition, and computer engineering, Santi Vilanova and Eloi Maduell create works at the crossing of art, science, and audiovisual research. All of their projects are developed using self-made technologies and take the form of immersive installations of light and sound, pictorial work, sculptural devices, kinetic gadgets, scenography, or multimedia concerts that explore an abstract universe of visual music. Inspired by natural phenomena, scientific research, literature, abstract art, experimental animation, or contemporary music, they develop abstract pieces that, from multiple perspectives, enhance the perception of space, light, sound and time.
What was your participation in the festival?
Our project ASTRES: Mapping the Firmament has been nominated for the S+T+ARTS Prize.
ASTRES is an immersive experience aiming to restore the universal heritage of the sky and raise awareness about the ongoing loss of the night sky in modern cities. Using innovative laser and audio projection, along with the visualization and sonification of astronomical data, the project not only celebrates the beauty and mystery of the cosmos but also encourages rediscovery of an ancient way of looking at stars.
From a stellar mapping technical widget, we create shows where the base canvas are the coordinates of the stars. From this canvas, we create new random constellations, and using data sonification techniques, we transform the nighttime sky into an audiovisual score, where each star is assigned a musical note and visual behaviour.
Which piece would you highlight from this edition?
ON AIR (Peter van Haaften, Michael Montanaro and Garnet Willis) is an interactive sound art installation that captures voices and produces sound modulations through a series of kinetic sculptures full of fantasy. The work culminates in a choral harmony of mirrors, transforming into a performance of sound, rhythm and light.
The work is notable for its sophisticated use of real-time voice capture and processing systems. The audience’s voices are recorded and modulated using sound synthesis and transformation algorithms, resulting in acoustic variations synchronized with the mechanical movement of the sculptures. These kinetic elements, equipped with sensors and microcontrollers, respond to sound and light data, creating an immersive environment where sound, light and movement form a unified language.
Yolanda Uriz
Bio
Believing that imagination is one of our best tools for facing today’s polycrisis, Yolanda Uriz works with smells, sounds, and digital technology, researching the interspecies chemical communication and the potential of olfactory language to connect with the non-human. Her practice manifests in unusual environments and interdisciplinary installations that encourage expanding subjectivities, and it has been showcased at festivals such as ISEA, Ars Electronica, Eufònic, Sonar+D, Wroclaw Biennale, and Sonic Acts, among others.
She is a founding member of the iii (instrument inventors initiative, Netherlands), with which she regularly collaborates.
What was your participation in the festival?
Chemical Calls of Care II (2025) is a multidisciplinary installation that explores the potential of audio-olfactory communication with plants through a speculative technological system, aiming to establish horizontal relationships with the biosphere. It invites the public to engage in chemical communication, a non-verbal language we do not fully understand. The work employs flexible tubes and fans to transmit chemical messages from plants to humans and, conversely, allows visitors to send olfactory messages to plants using elements that promote their well-being. It also features gas sensors that gather atmospheric data and convert it into haptic sounds, enhancing human understanding.
In a time marked by geopolitical, ecological, and social crises, Chemical Calls of Care II responds to the festival’s theme “PANIC – yes/no” by proposing care as a radical alternative to panic, fostering mutual care through a horizontal and interspecies language based on reciprocity and empathy with the natural environment.
Presented and acquired by the New Art Foundation, Chemical Calls of Care II is the second version of the project, the first of which was exhibited at the Schemerlicht festival (the Netherlands) in 2024, curated by Siuli Ko.
Which piece would you highlight from this edition?
Fluid Anatomy (Ioana Vreme Moser) revisits mid-20th-century analogue computing experiments with fluids displaced by electronics, using materials that have endured to this day. It features an obsolete yet functional system where a network of transparent tubes and organic-shaped cavities makes calculation processes visible. It is very poetic and reminded me of biological systems such as blood flow in mammals or sap in plants, blurring the boundaries between the organic and the technological. I find it interesting that while it preserves a forgotten chapter in the history of analogue computing, it also suggests new ways to imagine other forms of technology.
Some final reflections
Collectively, the opinions gathered point to Ars Electronica as a meeting space, fostering and re-establishing professional and personal bonds that strengthen an international community centred around art, technology, and critical reflection on the future. The festival is seen as a hub of inspiration, exchange, and intellectual debate, capable of encouraging collaborations and discussions that extend beyond its temporary timeframe. However, the scale of the event is also noted, with its breadth potentially being overwhelming, prompting critical reflection on the structural conditions that support this type of gathering. The importance of promoting more equitable cultural practices and fair remuneration models is emphasised, aligning with the values of sustainability and care that critical festivals of this kind aim to embody.
We would like to conclude the article by once again expressing our sincere gratitude to the Spanish artists with international recognition who have taken part in this conversation. We look forward to seeing you next year 🙂.
Recommended citation: BERGA-CARRERAS, Quelic; BLASCO-SOPLON, Laia; VILÀ, Irma; MOR, Enric. Echoes of Ars Electronica 2025. Mosaic [online], November 2025, no. 205. ISSN: 1696-3296. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7238/m.n205.2513
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