Since 1979, the Ars Electronica festival has drawn new media artists, scientists, and activists from around the world to Linz, Austria, for five days of symposia, exhibitions, performances, conferences and concerts. This year’s festival featured 1,472 makers and presenters from 83 countries—among them, students, faculty and alumni from VCUarts and VCUarts Qatar.
While this is VCUarts Qatar’s third appearance at Ars Electronica, this year marked the first collaboration between the two campuses.
“This exciting milestone strengthens our international connections and highlights the value of working together as one VCUarts community,” said Diane Derr, associate dean for research and development at VCUarts Qatar. “The Ars campus exhibition offers a unique opportunity to present our work alongside some of the most ambitious and forward-thinking academic and cultural institutions worldwide, affirming VCUarts as an active participant in global conversations on art, design and technology.”
The immersive exhibition, Ghūl, used the shapeshifting creature from Arabian folklore as a lens to examine the systems we live within—from the technological to the economic and ecological—and how they shape our world.
The exhibition featured six works, including two linked pieces by representatives from the Richmond campus. ShanMu Sun (M.F.A. ’25), a recent graduate and post-master’s fellow in Kinetic Imaging, created a VR/AR narrative that merged immigrant memory, generative AI, and immersive storytelling to navigate belonging and displacement. And in a real-time installation, Sirena Pearl, a student in Painting + Printmaking, rendered player movements as dynamic ASCII streams to confront themes of digital identity and self-surveillance.
Stephen Vitiello, chair of Kinetic Imaging, said the festival presented an opportunity for Sun and Pearl to make contacts with fellow artists and curators, as well as potential speakers for the Kinetic Imaging class Sun teaches.
“Each piece [in Ghūl] had an element of interactivity, and there was always someone with ShanMu’s goggles on or steering Sirena’s piece,” Vitiello said. “The festival was incredibly vibrant. It’s state-of-the-art technologies and conceptual thinking. We were all buzzing about it on the way home.”