Taiwanese artists gather to make a statement at the internationally acclaimed Ars Electronica Festival, where art, technology, and culture come together. Organized by the Ministry of Culture of Taiwan and produced by C-LAB’s Taiwan Sound Lab, the curatorial project Polyphony features 14 artists/teams from Taiwan. Their works will be shown from September 3 to 7 across three major venues in Linz, demonstrating Taiwan’s innovative drive in technology art, its concern for natural and human environments, and the country’s diversified and inclusive cultural spirit.
C-LAB Takes a Key Step in Its Collaboration with Ars Electronica Linz GmbH & Co KG
C-LAB’s operating organization, the Taiwan Living Arts Foundation, took a decisive step this January to sign a memorandum of understanding with Ars Electronica Linz GmbH & Co KG. This sets the stage for the large-scale curatorial project Polyphony at this year's festival. As suggested by the title, Polyphony presents a wealth of creative forms and intertwining perspectives.
The Ars Electronica Festival has been held in Linz, an industrial city in Austria, since 1979, and is the world’s largest and longest-running digital arts festival. Focused on the intersections of art, culture, and technology, the festival responds to contemporary trends and further reflects on social issues. This year’s theme, PANIC- yes/no, echoes the rapidly changing global landscape and environmental challenges, exploring how artists perceive and react to current events through their creative processes.
The POSTCITY Venue: Technology, Humanity, and Ecology in Dialogue
Six multimedia installations will be presented at POSTCITY, a former postal building adjacent to Linz’s central train station. These include Tender Soul of Ocean: recall, an immersive interactive installation by WHYIXD and Berlin-based sound collective KLING KLANG KLONG, which explores the relationship between humans and the sea. Using speculative wind models and real-time motion sensing techniques, environmental data and audience movement are translated into spatialized soundscapes, allowing visitors to collaboratively shape the rhythms of the environment.
Choreographer HO Hsiao-Mei and MeimageDance present the VR work The lost limbo: Sister Lin-Tou, based on the Taiwanese folk legend "Sister Lin-Tou." Combining ritualistic live dance on a journey that traverses East and West, punctuated with anachronisms and reincarnations, the dancers’ bodies are magnified, transformed, and deconstructed within the VR environment to deeply engage with issues of women’s roles in society and gender fluidity, in an era where virtual and real worlds intertwine and technology holds sway.
Jane Writing Project by TSENG Yu-Chuan applies facial recognition algorithms and image generation systems to render a digital portrait of the fictional character "Jane" for each day of the project, leveraging ChatGPT for AI-generated storytelling. The project launches a dialectical inquiry into subjectivity and existence in the era of algorithms and large language models. Ivan LIU’s interactive installation Echoes of the Land (Multichannel Version) responds to the challenges of extreme climates and seismic events. The work combines mechanics of kinetics and audience participation to create an “alternate nature” that shifts between virtual and actual senses in real-time.
CHI Po-Hao’s Cybernetics of Waterscape starts with the artist’s efforts to track down the source of the Keelung River and listen for the long-subdued “tān yīn (shoal sounds),” thereby reconstructing personal memories of a connection with the hydrological ecosystem. CHANG Yen-Tzu’s In the Abyss, Once Again as a Perceiver uses a robotic arm to drill into Palo Santo or sacred wood, blending the drilling sounds with a dynamic soundscape generated from real-time weather data feeds to offer a renewed reflection on the possibilities of perception and coexistence among humans and machines.
The Deep Space 8K Venue: Ultimate Immersive Sensory Experiences
In the “Deep Space 8K” immersive audio-visual venue at the Ars Electronica Center, pianist and composer LU Chia-Hui presents two original works that reflect a fighting spirit for faith, love, and hope: SUNFLOWER is a rondo dedicated to her late father, a champion of democracy, Dr. LU Hsiu-Yi, while BUTTERFLY ORCHID is a tribute to her mother CHEN Yu-Chiou and her sacrifice for family and nation. LU’s live performances are set against immersive digital imagery that evokes dream-like sensations.
DRIFT IN TIME is a collaboration between the digital art collective ULTRACOMBOS and chamber music ensemble Cicada. This piece begins with the "memory of ice," reflecting on the relationship between climate change and humanity. Audiences enter a flowing, meditative space interleaved with sounds and imagery, from whence they embark on a slow-paced and serene journey.
The Rheometer Concert: Interweaving Resonances Across Cosmic Expanses
The Rheometer Concert, produced by C-LAB’s Taiwan Sound Lab, will be performed at the Sonic Lab of Anton Bruckner Privatuniversität in Linz, a concert hall designed for performing multichannel computer-generated music. This event brings together music, visuals, sound installations, lighting, and interactive designs to create intertwining virtual and physical sensory experiences. The program list includes CHENG Nai-Chuan's Eternal Overture Before the Darkness, SHYU Li-Hsin's Gestures of Will, composer WANG Chih-Yun and audio-visual artist WU Ping-Sheng’s Superimposed (s, t), William KUO's new electroacoustic piece rustfruit, CHEN Chia-Hui’s Réplisome IV featuring LI Li-Chin on the sheng instrument, and XTRUX’s (SU Po-Jui, LEE Chun-Chueh, CHIU Chen-En, TSENG Chun-Wei) and sound artist HUANG Yung-Jen’s collaborative work Boulder, created with game engines, computer-generated music, and immersive sound technologies.
Channeling Taiwan’s Innovative Energy Towards International Technology Art Exchanges
The Polyphony project brings together cross-disciplinary collaborations between artists from diverse fields and technology art teams. Through a variety of disciplines from musical compositions, electromechanics, interactive programming, AI applications, electroacoustic designs, instrumental performances, to VR dance choreography, the project approaches creation and audience experience from multiple perspectives, showcasing Taiwan’s innovative strengths through international technology art exchanges.