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Ars Electronica Festival 2020 | Sound Campus


  • Ars Electronica Linz GmbH & Co KG / Ars-Electronica- Strasse 1 4040 Linz Austria (map)
Poster-Insta-def-no-url-small ars electronica 2020.jpg

A metaverse for sound art and music EXHIBITION & CONCERTS


Kunstuniversität Linz SOUND CAMPUS -> Ars Electronica Festival 2020 
9-13 Sept 2020

Release date (on this website): 8 September


Software soon available for Mac, Win and Oculus!

The Metaverse is a social and public virtual environment for sound art exhibition and concerts. It is a multiplayer game on a cruise where you can experience live concerts (10-12 September) and interact with more than 30 sound artworks.  



(The Chants Of Real Estate Data by Malte Steiner at the Sound Campus metaverse)


Sound Campus is a new program of Kunstuniversität Linz especially oriented towards examining the state of experimental sound practices at universities and research centers. It opens a possibility for students and researchers to present new forms of understanding sonic art to the big audience of Ars Electronica Festival.

What can you do in the the metaverse?

  • Listen to multichannel sound works by great composers: experience 3D audio in live binaural format through headphones!

  • Interact with interactive sonic artworks: from vocoders to a virtual version of an african instrument!

  • Watch live performances happening at the Sound Campus section of the Ars Electronica Festival 2020 in our virtual auditorium!

  • Meet your distant friends at an online 3D multiplayer experience!


Some captures of the Sound Campus metaverse

Practical Information:

  • Live Concerts on 10, 11 and 12 from 8pm to 10:30 pm (GMT+2 Austria). Program information below.

  • Download the software on 8 September and run the application for visiting the exhibition and concerts with your friends!

  • Why the teddy bear? We are so post-internet and post-meme... What is wrong with it?

Credits + Artworks:

Enrique Tomás: curator and tech director 

Daniel Romero: Metaverse design and programming;

Julia del Río: Project manager, graphic design, 3D programming

Interactive Sound Artworks:

We present here eight interactive artworks exploring new forms of engagement between people and digital media for problem-solving in the physical world. Experiences showcasing socio-cultural diversity from African communities (Timbila Live Aid) and surreal architectures formed from analysis of the unstable real estate market of Berlin (Malte Steiner). Media archeology cabinets decomposing the famous vocoder (Ivan Petkov), conceptual alternatives to present soundart in VR environments (Oliver Lehner; Alex Hofmann) as well as sonic escape rooms (Ritter and Aska) or virtual soundwalks (Munarriz; Kumenko, Guedes and Schroeder).

  • Timbila Live Aid (Ricardo Climent, Manusamo an Bzika, Miquel Bernat, Matchume Zango, Alena Mesarosova, Manu Ferrer, Drumming-GP, George van Dam, Polo Vallejo and Jean-Luc Fafchamps) (UK,MZ):  Play or Burst

  • Malte Steiner (DE): The Chants Of Real Estate Data

  • Leonid Kuzmenko, Carlos Guedes, Franziska Schroeder (UAE/UK): Mirage

  • Alex Hofmann (AT): Study for Saxophonist Avatar and two Loudspeakers in a VR environment

  • Ivan Petkov (BG/AT): Vocal recomposer

  • Oliver Lehner (AT): Untitled 2020

  • Martin Ritter and Alyssa Aska (DE): Virtual Escape Room

  • Jaime Munarriz (ES): La Cupole Soundgarden / Klanggarten Kuppel

Multichannel Composition Program:

VR as a creative midst for spatial audio experiments. With this gallery of multichannel works we want to evaluate the experience of listening to spatial electroacoustic music when it is embodied in a VR social event at a large scale festival.

  • Jaime Reis (PT, Escola Superior de Música de Lisboa): Fluxus, pas trop haut dans le ciel - 16 channels in a dome distribution

  • Katernina Gryvul (UA, Lviv National Music Academy): Taxidermia - 8 channels

  • Michael Hutsteiner (AT, Anton Bruckner Privatuniversität): The Petrified Horde - dolby 7.1.4 Surround

  • Theodoros Lotis (GR, Ionian University): Portrait d’une manifestante  - 8 channels

  • Panayiotis Kokoras (US, University of North Texas): Qualia - 8 channels

  • Kosmas Giannoutakis (GR/DE, ZKM): Bursty Exorbitance - 8 channels

  • NOCTVRNAL - Helena McGill and Anna Wozniewicz (US, Chapman University):  - DreamFREQ - second order ambisonics

  • Juan Carlos Vasquez (US, University of Virginia): A Landscape of Events - 8 channels

  • Paulo Assis Barbosa (BR, University of São Paulo): Simulacrum - 8 channels

Acoustic Realities Program:

Musical works created for acoustic territories arriving in the virtual deck of the metaverse. This pavilion is conceived as a large group of boat cabins featuring compositions created at diverse latitudes of our real world.

  • Patricia Martinez (AR, Universidad Nacional de Quilmes): Conciencia pura de invención (Pure Consciousness Invention)

  • Vlad Chlek (NL, Fontys School of the Arts): [fMRI/extrapolation] - audio and video

  • Luc Messinezis (GR, Ionian University):  Procession of the Simulacra. A journey through sonic hyperreality in four movements.

  • Louise Harris (UK, University of Glasgow): Alocas 

  • Irradiation (Patricia Enigl) (AT, IEM Graz): Sounding Space Junk

  • Ida Hiršenfelder a.k.a. Beepblip (SI, Cona Institute, Kamizdat label): Interactions 

  • Massimo Vito Avantaggiato (IT, Conservatorio Suizzera Italiana): A Nazaire

  • RGBastler / Florine Mougel and Andreea Vladut (AT, University of Art Linz): Derapage dans la ville

  • Martín Amodeo (AR, Universidad Nacional del Sur): Lima 2 November

  • Gintas Kraptavičius / Indra Kraptavičiūtė (LT, Lithuanian Composer Union): Digital Vintage

BFA & MFA students from Trondheim Academy of Fine Art (KiT), NTNU. 

The KiT Pavilion cuts across disciplines, histories, identities, and futurities exploring the ways in which codes of economic and cultural normativities are reified, enforced, and performed, and the lived consequences of such power dynamics are experienced and transcended. Curated by Alexandra Murray-Leslie.

  • Einar Grinde: The Rules

  • Stewart Home, Thies Mynther and Mikalsen & Marhaug: Even Masts Must Burn 

  • Mikalsen & Marhaug: Viral in the virus 29.04.2020

  • Michelle Rassmussen and Anat Ben David:  Too cool for Corona

  • Tuva Holm Nymo: Translated Guinea Pigs

  • Tuda Muda: Breaking of the loop in flesh

  • Qianhui Qian:  Viral Viral and In abyss we live

  • Naomi Chan: Circle

  • Markus Neergaard: 'C' 

  • Máté Labus: ZimmeZum

Live Performaces from Linz:

Thursday 10.9

  • 20:00 Alex de las Heras (ES/CO) feat. Paul Peters (Gula Gula) : Fantasy Island

  • 20:10 A Certain Trio (PL,AT)

  • 20:45 Christoph Punzmann (AT)

  • 21:15 Duo 3-Kanal (Katharina Klement, Martina Claussen) (AT)

  • 21:55 Brane Zorman (SI): Reclaiming Time - ElektroMagnetikSpektrum

Friday 11.9 

  • 20:00 Alex de las Heras (ES/CO) feat. Paul Peters (Gula Gula): Fantasy Island

  • 20:10 Thomas Grill (AT), Till Bovermann (DE), Kathrin Hunze (DE): merge and dissolve

  • 20:45 Thomas Gorbach (AT): FlashRust

  • 21:15 Paul Gründorfer (AT)

  • 21:45 AWNJS All Women’s Networked Jam Session: A distributed location performance (2020)

Saturday 12.9 

  • 18:00 Michael Mayr (AT)

  • 18:45 Trial #1 (AT,SI)

  • 19:00 PYUK (ES,AT)


https://sound-campus.itch.io/metaverse

Online access:

Due to the pandemic situation, our activities will be mostly attended online. We will use the following communication channels:

  • We have created an Itch page for centralizing the access and massive download of the metaverse game: https://sound-campus.itch.io/metaverse   The metaverse will be downloaded from this page. For those not directly involved, the metaverse is a multiplayer 3D environment with sonic artworks. It also incorporates an auditorium where you can watch live performances.

  • We have a Facebook page (@soundcampus) and an Instagram account (sound.campus) where we will post every 3 days new information about your works.