735 films from 51 countries were submitted for prize consideration this year. 140 of them made it past the jury’s first round of cuts, and thereby remained in contention for the Golden Nica grand prize, two
Awards of Distinction and 12 Honorary Mentions.

The Ars Electronica Animation Festival is a compilation of those 140 works grouped according to formal and substantive criteria, and thus provides a condensed overview of what’s happening here now. The Prix Ars Electronica’s mission ever since its inception has been to single out for recognition works that take new approaches to animation and expand the genre’s productive and creative spectrum.
For years, it seemed impossible to keep up with the impressive new developments coming out of VFX studios serving the movie business giants. In competition with them, films produced by artists and indie filmmakers usually didn’t stand a chance. But the rapid development of hardware and the price reductions that went along with it as well as the growing professionalism of the training that was available brought about a decisive change. Now, VFX has become an essential element of computer animation, a standard of everyday life in this field. Generative and interactive works, projections in an exhibition context or open-air setting, innovative hybrids of analog and digital animation that deliver totally new visual experiences, and found footage—all these developments attest to how this genre’s boundaries have steadily shifted outward and dissolved altogether.

Plus, there’s the fact that the internet and its rapidly growing databases provide artists with access to knowledge to an extent that was utterly unimaginable not so long ago.

Only a few years ago, short films with a linear plot still predominated among entries to the Prix Ars Electronica. Since then, this approach has undergone a quantitative decline, but what has dramatically increased over the same timeframe is narrative and aesthetic complexity that reflects the profound social transformations we’ve been living through.

But by no means should this be construed to imply that the short film genre—be it traditionally narrative or experimental—has lost any of its power to get across a message or to attract viewer interest.

The Ars Electronica Animation Festival’s lineup is complemented by a Young Animations program showcasing excellent submissions to the Prix’s u19 – CREATE YOUR WORLD category for young people under age 19 who live in Austria. Young Animations thus brings together the best of the steadily increasing number of entries to this competition and also prizewinning works from the partner institutions bugnplay (CH), MB21 (DE) and C3<19 (HU). A special treat is a selection of last year’s prizewinning films at the Japan Media Arts Festival, and Ars Electronica the special program of Campus Genius Award.

EXPANDEN ANIMATION

In this program, animation takes leave of its usual screening rooms for venues that include gallery spaces, cathedrals, facades and landscapes, and reconfigures these settings in the process. Unaccustomed perspectives, impressive spatial experiences and bizarrely illuminated realms materialize before our very eyes.

BOX
05:25 | Prix Ars Electronica 2014 | Award of Distinction
Bot & Dolly (US)
THE ARK
05:16 | Prix Ars Electronica 2014
Romain Tardy (Independant) (FR)
A million times
01:21 | Prix Ars Electronica 2014
Humans since 1982 (SE/GE)
Lighthouse 3D Mapping.
01:34 | Prix Ars Electronica 2014
Yury Pelin (RU)
The Colony - A tale on Textile
03:25 | Prix Ars Electronica 2014
Joshuah Brindin Howard (US),
Lorenz Potthast (DE), Jonas Wiese (DE)
(Urbanscreen) with Svenja Keune (DE)

ESCAPE
06:11 | Prix Ars Electronica 2014
Laszlo Zsolt Bordos (HU)
O (Omicron)
04:27 | Prix Ars Electronica 2014
Romain Tardy (FR)
Advection
04:02 | Prix Ars Electronica 2014
Robert Seidel, David Kamp (DE)
Light Leaks
01:22 | Prix Ars Electronica 2014
Kyle McDonald (US),
Jonas Jongejan (DK)
the impenetrable
05:21 | Prix Ars Electronica 2014
mihai grecu (RO)
The Flood Panels
09:08 | Prix Ars Electronica 2014
DEPART (AT)
Khôra I.
06:18 | Prix Ars Electronica 2014
The Macula (CZ)

EXPERIMENTAL
Tests conducted amidst semi-abstract proving grounds and impressive technological experiments—a completely new way to deploy stereoscopy, for instance, or the use of found footage—produce new visual experiences of space and time.

MENTAL STATES
Psychological states of emergency; fears; the ego’s dark sides; analyses of experiences in people’s pasts and, in many cases, in their earliest childhood; the search for sexual harmony—the quintessentially human perceptions that surface in Mental States call upon us to consider our own self.

LONELY BONES
10:00 | Prix Ars Electronica 2014
ROSTO (NL)
Defragmentation
14:02 | Prix Ars Electronica 2014
Saebyul Hwangbo (KP)
Futon
06:02 | Prix Ars Electronica 2014 | Honorary Mention
Yoriko Mizushiri (JP)
ENCOR E DES CHANGEMENTS
10:00 | Prix Ars Electronica 2014
Benoît Guillaume,
Barbara Malleville (FR)
Portrait
02:51 | Prix Ars Electronica 2014
Donato Sansone (IT)
The Great Rabbit
07:12 | Prix Ars Electronica 2014
Atsushi Wada (Sacrebleu Productions,
CaRTe bLaNChe) (FR)
Out of Bounds
6:36 | Prix Ars Electronica 2014
Viktoria Piechowitz
(The Animation Workshop) (DE)
Myosis
02:22 | Prix Ars Electronica 2014
Emmanuel Asquier-Brassart,
Ricky Cometa, Guillaume Dousse,
Adrien Gromelle, Thibaud Petitpas (FR)

NARRATION
From lovingly poetic to coarsely comic, biting satire to loud-and-clear political statements—today’s filmmakers don’t shy away from any issue at all in the digital narratives they confront us with, and demonstrate yet again that there are no limits to computer animation’s storytelling capabilities.

Mr Hublot
11:48 | Prix Ars Electronica 2014
Alexandre Espigares (LU),
Laurent Witz (FR) (ZEILT productions)
Chipotle Scarecrow
03:33 | Prix Ars Electronica 2014
Moonbot Studios (US)
Interview
05:17 | Prix Ars Electronica 2014
Mikkel Okholm
(The Animation Workshop) (DK)
Hollow land
13:56 | Prix Ars Electronica 2014
Michelle and Uri Kranot (DK)
Kangaroos can’t jump backwards
02:24 | Prix Ars Electronica 2014
Rafael Mayrhofer (motiphe) (AT)
Once Upon a Candle
06:22 | Prix Ars Electronica 2014
Humphrey Erm (The Animation Workshop) (SE)
Silent
03:19 | Prix Ars Electronica 2014
Moonbot Studios (US)
Home sweet home
08:31 | Prix Ars Electronica 2014
Pierre Clenet, Alejandro Diaz, Romain Mazenet,
Stéphane Paccolat (FR)
Escarface
04:52 | Prix Ars Electronica 2014
Lionel Arnold, Vincent Meunier, Eva Navaux,
Pierre Plouzeau, Dario Sabato, Burcu Sankur (FR)