This year’s Expanded conference took place at the skyloft in Ars Electronica Center in Linz, Austria.
3rd–5th September 2025
This edition has been over for
Expanded 2025
The thirteenth edition of the Expanded Conference in cooperation with ACM, organized by the Hagenberg Campus of the University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria and Ars Electronica, will take place from September 3rd to 5th as part of the Ars Electronica Festival 2025.
Location: skyloft at Ars Electronica Center, Ars-Electronica-Straße 1, 4040 Linz, Austria
CONFERENCE ON ANIMATION AND INTERACTIVE ART
EXPANDED 2025 – Conference on Animation and Interactive Art
The Expanded Conference (Expanded 2025) will take place from September 3rd to 5th as part of the Ars Electronica Festival 2025. This call for paper focuses on academic papers in the field of Expanded Animation and Interactive Art that explore and experiment with visual expression at the intersection of art, technology, and society. We will have two categories (Research Paper and Art Paper), where submissions will undergo a rigorous review process. All selected speakers will be given a free pass to the Ars Electronica Festival (September 3rd to 7th).
Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: 3D Scanning, AI-generated Images, AI-based artworks, Artistic Computer Animation, Art & Science collaboration projects, Audio-visual Experiments, Data Journalism and Animated Documentary, Data Visualizations, Digital Media Art History, Digital, Hybrid, and Expanded Theater, Expanded Animation, Generative Art, Human-AI interaction and Human-AI collaboration, Hybrids between Animation and Game, Media Facades, Music Visualization, New approaches to artistic research and practice-based methodologies, Participatory art projects, Performance Projects, Playful Interactions and Experiences, Projection Mapping, Projects using NFT, Metaverse, Social Media, Reactive and Interactive audio/visual Work, Real-time CG, Scientific Visualizations, Site-specific Installations, Sound Art and Soundscapes, Tangible Interfaces and New Forms of Experiences, Transmedia Narratives, Virtual Humans and Environments, Virtual Production, VR, AR, MR & XR.
Expanded ’25: Proceedings of the Conference on Animation and Interactive Art
Hagler, J., Köhl, M., Pasquier, P., Wintersberger, P., Hosea, B., Kim, J. & Kocur, M. 2025. Proceedings of the Conference on Animation and Interactive Art. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.1145/3749893
Expanded ’24: Proceedings of the Conference on Animation and Interactive Art
Hagler, J., Szabo, V., Wintersberger, P., Guljajeva, V., Mitchell, B. & Kocur, M. 2024. Proceedings of the Expanded 2024 – Conference on Animation and Interactive Art. Expanded Animation Conference on Animation and Interactive Art (Expanded ’24), Linz, Austria. Ars Electronica Linz. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13382838
Submission Categories
- Research Paper (ACM double-column format)
- Focus on academic works that present study results, literature reviews, theoretical considerations, etc. based on state-of-the-art research methods
- Up to 8 pages (excluding references)
- Presentation: 10 min. + panel discussion
- Submissions will undergo a strict double-blind review process
- Contributions must be novel and not been published somewhere else.
- Art Paper (ACM double-column format)
- Focus on the artwork, case study, and work in progress – including theory and context
- Up to 8 pages (excluding references), incl. video documentation
- Presentation: 10 min. + panel discussion
- Peer-reviewed in form of a single-blind process
- No exhibition or on-site demonstration
- The submitted paper has to be original and not previously published or currently accepted for publication elsewhere.
Important Dates
- Submission site open: February 24th, 2025
- Submission deadline (extended!):
April 27th, 2025, 23:59 (AoE)May 4th, 2025, 23:59 (AoE) - Decision notification: June 9th, 2025 (AoE)
- Camera-Ready Deadline: End of July 2025
- Conference days: September 3rd to 5th, 2025
Submission
Submission is via Easy Chair at https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=expanded2025, where you will be prompted to set up a free Easy Chair account if you don’t have one already.
All submitted papers should be fully anonymized.
Please exclude any author and institution information from the author list on the title page, remove author information from all paper headers, and remove any clues that would directly identify any of the authors. Please anonymize your submission file. Please also check that your PDF creator programs did not include author information in the metadata.
Citations of your own published work (including online) should be in the third person, in a manner that is not traceable to the identity of the authors. For example, the wording “in [4], Valley and Sea have proposed…” is acceptable, whereas “in [4], we have proposed…” is not. (Where reference [4] is listed explicitly as “Valley, D. and Sea, A., Detecting Valley and Sea, In Proc. XYZ ’24, 901–911.”)
Please refrain from mentioning the name of your institution in the study approval statement. For example, do not say, “Our study was approved by the IRB board at the University of Arts,” as that reveals your university’s name.
Please do not include an “acknowledgments” section in the submission. If your Art Paper is accepted, you will submit a revised version that identifies you and your co-authors, your affiliations, and any appropriate acknowledgments.”
All information can be edited up to the submission deadline. After the submission deadline, no changes will be allowed to the author list and order. Please review the ACM Policy on Authorship for more information.
Template
You are invited to submit in the double-column paper format using the ACM master template (double-column, i.e., Latex \documentclass[sigconf, anonymous, review]):
For Latex and Overleaf authors, please use the file “sample-sigconf-authordraft.tex”, which you find within the downloaded template.
Proceedings and Publication Fees
At least one author of each accepted paper needs to be registered to the conference and must present their contribution at the Expanded Conference, in person in Linz.
Accepted papers will appear in the Proceedings of the Expanded Conference in the ACM Digital Library. Following the new ACM publishing model for conference proceedings, all accepted Expanded 2025 papers will be published Open Access.
Many authors will qualify for free OA publishing, while others will be required to pay an applicable article processing charge (APC). If you are the corresponding author of an Expanded’2025 submission, please follow the steps on the ICPS website (https://www.acm.org/publications/icps/author-guidance) prior to your submission to determine whether you will be required to pay an APC. This is a condition to the acceptance of your paper, and no exception will be made.
Important notice: The payment deadline for applicable APCs is 45 days prior to the start of the conference. The co-authors on a paper are jointly responsible for ensuring timely payment of the applicable article processing charge (APC) for that paper. If the APC remains unpaid 90 days after the initial due date, all authors on the paper will be prohibited from contributing to any ACM venue (including ACM journals, conferences, magazines, and books) until the payment is completed.
Venue
The conference will be held at the Ars Electronica Center as part of the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria.
The media festival will take place from the 3rd to the 7th of September 2025: https://ars.electronica.art/festival/en/.
Organizing Committee
Please follow the link for the Expanded 2025 organizing committee.
SPEAKERS
The speakers for Expanded Animation 2025 are confirmed and we’re proud to introduce them to you.
Evaluate, Play, and Connect
Michael Lankes
University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria
Simone Kriglstein
Masaryk University & AIT Austrian Institute Of Technology
Günter Wallner
Johannes Kepler University Linz
Birds of a Feather
Everardo Reyes & Jisoo Park
Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis
Liz Rosenthal
Biennale di Venezia
Boris Eldagsen
www.eldagsen.com
Art & Industry
featured by Sparte Information & Consulting der WKOÖ
Volker Helzle & Andreas Dahn
Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg GmbH, Animationsinstitut & www.andreas-dahn.de
Philipp Seifried & Regina Reisinger
Microbird GmbH
Dinko Draganovic & Christian Steininger
www.dinko.at & Forafilm
Artist Perspective
Wendi Yan
www.wendiyan.com
Alona Rodeh
www.alonarodeh.com
Alessandro Bavari
www.alessandrobavari.com
Adrian Jonas Haim
Self-Employed
ASIFA Austria Forum
Dagmar Schürrer
www.dagmarschuerrer.com
Tore Knabe
www.tore-knabe.com
Tamiko Thiel & /p
www.tamikothiel.com
Expanded Art
Yuhanxiao Ma & Anna Ren
DXARTS, University of Washington & New York University
Chi-Hung Huang, Jie-Yin Tai & Yun-Chun Lin
National Tsing Hua University
Johannes Pöll & Raphael Schaumburg-Lippe
Ars Electronica Futurelab
Jana Horáková
Masaryk University
Deepti Dutt Srinath
www.deepti-dutt.com
Interactive Experiences
Ali Nikrang & Susanne Kiesenhofer
Ars Electronica Futurelab & University for Music and Theatre Munich
Joey Verbeke & Koi Ren
k0j0
Sara Mlakar
Digital Media Lab, University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria
Denis Protopopov, Luis Toledo & David Glowacki
The Intangible Realities Laboratory
Zoe Qi-Jing Li, YuFan Li & Varvara Guljajeva
HKUST-GZ
Zi-Wei Wu
Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Creative AI & Speculative Futures
Elham KargarTazargh
SAP
Philipp Thölke
Wihanble S'a Center, Bard College
Kevin Blackistone
www.blackistone.com
Philippe Pasquier
Simon Fraser University
Beste Ileri & Toprak Firat
www.toprakfirat.com
Rewa Wright, June Kim & Simon Howden
Queensland University of Technology
Extended Reality
Chueh-Fu Yu & Bo-Yu Tseng
National Tsing Hua University
Selina Behrens, Simone Feldbacher & Sebastian Grundherr
University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria
Yuyang Jiang
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology / The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou)
Rose Bond
rosebond.com
Wei Huang
Shanghai Institute of Visual Art
Danlin Huang
China Academy of Art
Animation & Performance
Celine Pham & Jolanda Abasolo
University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria
Mona Hedayati
Hannes Sturm & Vincent Maurer
Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg GmbH
Nairy Eivazy
LUCA School of Arts/KU Leuven
Charlotte Triebus, Ivana Druzetic-Vogel & Christian Geiger
MIREVI (Hochschule Düsseldorf)
PROGRAM
This year’s conference features an exciting mix of speakers from accepted papers and invited speakers.
All scheduled times are local Austrian time (Europe/Vienna). Use the dropdown below to switch to a different timezone.
PDF DOWNLOAD
LIVE
Visit the Expanded YouTube channel to see current and past content.
Switch to the current or next scheduled live stream by clicking on the button below.
Expanded Animation – Mapping and Unlimited Landscape
The symposium Expanded Animation began in 2013 and offered a first approach to the expanding field of computer animation. It has since become an established part of the Ars Electronica Animation Festival and the international competition Prix Ars Electronica Computer Animation. Every year under an overarching theme, the symposium has researched the field of technology, art, animation, and aesthetics, investigated the collapsing boundaries in digital animation, and explored positions and future trends. As with the first conferences on computer animation at Ars Electronica in the 1980s, practice and theory are equally important. The richly illustrated publication Expanded Animation: Mapping an Unlimited Landscape features contributions from speakers and artists from the past six years and presents an overview of the prize winners in prix category Computer Animation from 2011 to 2018.
250 pages, 250 Illustrations
EXPANDED PLAY EXHIBITION
The Expanded Play exhibition features an interactive collection of playful and experimental works that explore the boundaries of mixed reality, spatial interaction, and Artificial Intelligence within the realm of playful media. Now in its second edition, the cooperative exhibition showcases a range of student and artist works from the Digital Media Department at the University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria, the Film Academy Baden Württemberg, Witten/Herdecke University, and the Department of Visual Computing at Masaryk University Brno. The exhibition is located at the Salzamt in Linz, a local platform and gallery for artists and cultural creators from various fields. This year’s selection addresses a wide range of topics and technologies that subtly echo the Ars Electronica Festival theme PANIC – yes/no. From dealing with climate catastrophes such as an oil spill, to justifying your existence as a non-AI individual, interacting as a spider-based entity, or splitting your senses to observe an occult ritual, each work possesses both a promising portion of agency, but also a shiver of fear. But there is no need to panic. These are all just simulations, right?
Atelierhaus Salzamt
Wednedsay, September 3rd to Sunday, September 7th, 2025
Wed–Sat: 11:00–20:00, Sun: 11:00–18:00
Black Tide Protocol
Black Tide Protocol
The interactive experience Black Tide Protocol portrays an ecosystem on the brink of disaster. A defective oil platform spews a deadly, colorful tide into the sea that threatens to wipe out an entire seal colony. Use the lights from your skimmer ships to track down absorbable oil particles and split complex oil mixtures before removing them. Can you stop the black tide before it’s too late?
Luca Geiger (DE), Alexander Hödlmoser (AT), Dino Ponjevic (AT)
Fate of the Minotaur
Fate of the Minotaur
In the VR experience Fate of the Minotaur, players take on the role of humans from Athens who are sent as a sacrifice into the labyrinth of the Minotaur by Minos, King of Crete. The players learn about the tragic family story behind the ancient Greek myth and have to pick a side by either killing the Minotaur or sparing the troubled creature’s life. In a unique approach, the content can be experienced on different immersive scale levels, depending on the technical and physical limitations of the location presenting the experience. From a technical perspective, a novel engine-agnostic and flexible open-source virtual production framework was used to realise the multiplayer network part of the game. Our non-photorealistic visual approach is inspired by ancient Greek murals and vases, allowing us to ensure that the experience has a small footprint in terms of energy consumption and required equipment.
Andreas Dahn (DE), Leszek Plichta (DE), Simon Spielmann (DE), Eduard Schäfer (DE), Justus Blönnigen (DE)
Mindful Moves
Mindful Moves
Mindful Moves explores the realities of the modern society, where many individuals spend extended periods seated in front of screens with minimal physical movement. Despite widespread awareness of the negative health impacts of sedentary behavior, daily routines often require this posture. This interactive minigame forms part of a broader PhD research project focused on esports training for mental health and soft skills development. Esports players, as an extreme case of prolonged screen time, serve as a test group—if the intervention proves beneficial for them, it holds promise for a wider audience.
Mindful Moves delivers a gamified introduction to moving meditation, designed to be practiced either seated or standing. Players follow guided breathing patterns while engaging in gentle stretching, promoting both relaxation and physical well-being. The experience incorporates alternative input devices—such as a soft toy—to support varied forms of interaction and to enhance accessibility.
Danielle K. Langlois (US/CZ), Vojtěch Hyánek (CZ), Simone Kriglstein (AT)
Reverse Turing Test
Reverse Turing Test
In an era in which Artificial Intelligence is fundamentally changing our perception of reality, the VR-experience A Reverse Turing Test presents a fascinating reversal of the classic Turing Test. This immersive Virtual Reality installation challenges visitors to disguise themselves as the only human among advanced AI systems, raising profound questions about the nature of intelligence, identity, and reality. Human visitors find themselves in a virtual train compartment, embodying the persona of Genghis Khan as an avatar.
The other passengers are famous personalities as well: Aristotle, Mozart, Leonardo da Vinci, and Cleopatra. However, they are driven by some of the most sophisticated AIs currently available. The train conductor informs the group that one of them is a human and they have to find out who. Aristotle suggests that each one asks the person to their left a question that helps find out whether the one answering is a human or AI. Thus, the installation reverses the classic Turing test: instead of a human trying to identify a machine, the AIs have to unmask the human among them.
Tore Knabe (DE), Jonathan Hart (DE)
Divine Machinery
Divine Machinery
Divine Machinery is an interactive installation exploring the topic of transhumanism. Visitors enter a dark room, facing a personified Artificial Intelligence. Interaction happens through touching its hands, where each response alters the AI’s mood, as well as the room’s soundscape, animations, and lighting.
Selina Behrens (AT), Florian Horak (AT), Simone Feldbacher (AT), Sebastian Grundherr (AT), Julia Posch (AT), Michelle Treziak (AT)
GEMeinsam
GEMeinsam
GEMeinsam (shared solitude) is an interdisciplinary, collaborative project that was developed as part of the “Hybrid Animation” course at the Hagenberg Campus of the University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria. The project artistically explores the theme of loneliness and how it affects people in different ways. The narrative structure guides the audience through a multi-layered residential building inhabited by numerous fictional residents. Each room reveals its own story, its own personality, and its own individual approach to isolation, longing, or withdrawal. To emphasize the commonality in loneliness, some of the rooms are interactively connected, reacting subtly to one another. This creates a silent dialogue between the individual stories and characters, underscoring the emotional depth and complexity of the subject matter.
Kevin Killinger (AT), Jan Klug (AT), Gerald Gruber (AT)
Out of the Darkness
Out of the Darkness
Out of the Darkness is a multiplayer digital tabletop experience about the the Velynx, a race of luminescent felines from the planet Claris, who lived peacefully in a secluded forest on the planet Scura. Their happy days were shattered when the native race found them and discovered their potential as an energy source. Luckily, before their abduction one feline managed to send a distress signal to their home planet. Guide the escaped Velynx to the dispatched rescue ships and avoid the dangers along the way.
Richardo Serban (AT), Larissa Schäfer (AT), Jennifer Ye (AT)
Soundwalker
Soundwalker
Soundwalker is a VR experience in which you navigate a world cloaked in darkness using sound-based echolocation. As a blind traveler, every footstep, clap, or echo pulse reveals the hidden geometry of your surroundings. Follow resonant clues, solve spatial puzzles, and discover the story as the world around you resounds. In this world, silence is blindness and noise is your only light.
Andrea Eckmayr (AT), Alexander Strauss (AT), Maksym Zinchenko (UA/AT)
The Summoning
The Summoning
The Summoning is an interactive sensory installation that invites participants to explore a demon summoning ritual through fragmented perspectives. The experience combines visual, auditory, and digital storytelling via a keyhole viewer, a listening cone, a laptop showing a Discord call, and a book of demonology. Visitors must piece together clues to determine which of the demons featured in the book is being summoned.
Selina Behrens (AT), Sebastian Grundherr (AT), Moritz Höll (AT), Julia Posch (AT)
Evelynn
Evelynn
Evelynn is an animated chatbot controlled by an Artificial Intelligence. Players can freely converse with her while she reacts with corresponding dynamic facial expressions and body movements.
Philipp Asteriou (AT), Gerald Gruber (AT), Nicole Lehmann (AT), Stephanie Schattauer (AT), Anna Mühlbacher (AT)
Jiwa
Jiwa
In a world increasingly shaped by touchscreen interactions and mobile dependency, concerns around attention, isolation, and screen fatigue are growing, especially among younger users. While digital tools can foster connection, they often result in passive, solitary engagement.
Jiwa responds to this challenge by reimagining mobile AR gameplay as a shared, embodied experience. Using interactive markers anchored in physical space, players collaborate in short, cooperative sessions that demand movement, coordination, and real-world interaction. These tangible interfaces transform mobile devices from isolating screens into tools for playful connection.
Blending the digital and physical, Jiwa investigates how age, cognition, and interactivity shape social play. The project offers a compelling alternative to screen-centric design—one that fosters agency, inclusivity, and presence through augmented reality.
Vinaya Tawde (IN)
ProDucktion
ProDucktion
ProDucktion serves as an arcade-like experience in which two players have to cooperate and construct a rubber duck with a hat. After completing a step-by-step-process, the assembled duck is judged for quality, and if successful, a sticker with the created duck will be printed and gifted to the players. If the evaluation fails, the duck is comically squashed by a hydraulic press.
Nori Greinecker (AT), Bernhard Haunschmied (AT), Verena Kremsmayr (AT), Wiktoria Olborksi (AT)
Spider Embodiment
Spider Embodiment
This project explores what it means to embody a spider in virtual reality. Spiders, with their unique anatomy and movement patterns, offer intriguing possibilities—from immersive gameplay to therapeutic exposure for arachnophobia. Yet their radically different body structure presents a challenge: how can we map human gestures to spider-like motion in a way that feels intuitive and immersive?
This work investigates new interaction paradigms and control strategies to bridge that gap—inviting visitors to step into eight legs and experience the world from an entirely new perspective.
Philipp Thaya (AT), Martin Kocur (DE)
GALLERY
Impressions from Expanded Conference 2025.
Impressions from past Expanded conferences.
PARTNERS & CREDITS
In Cooperation With
Expanded 2025 is in-cooperation with ACM SIGGRAPH.
Partners
The conference has been made possible through a collaboration between the Digital Media department at the Hagenberg Campus of the University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria and the Ars Electronica Festival. We want to thank the following sponsors for their support.
Supported by
