Embracing art, technology and society, the festival goes global this year, led by the theme “A New Digital Deal.” We reflect on the technological promises made to us and try to rethink the foundations of the digital world, to reconcile it with our current reality and to explore it as it intersects with culture and society. 

The Ars Electronica Festival Garden NYC is a portal to different realities, diverse communities and immersive experiences: See live showcases by cutting edge performers, poets, dancers and musicians connecting the worlds of AR and VR with physical reality. Become a part of an interactive audio reactive visual sculpture. Get enchanted by audio visual performances of top notch creative coders. Visit the future of exhibitions: an NFT gallery. Tune in to panel discussions via streaming or join live with your avatar! Talk to the performers during the Q&A and start a dialogue. Explore magical sculptures and portals with your Smartphone in the AR sculpture garden. 

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XRE has a bold vision of how to bring communities together in our new reality. Audience bubbles became more separated by and during the pandemic. We want to bring these bubbles back together. So we are working with artists with different cultural and social backgrounds. Audience accessibility is also very important to us. It is a big component of dismantling white supremacy in the age of Covid and Racial Injustice. To solve this problem we’re bringing the audience as close as possible to our work. We are doing this by bringing the audience as close as we can to themselves. If we, the creators, can be changed by our work, our audience can too. Together we can acknowledge the realities of life and the joy of diversity within it, rather than ostracize one another for different perspectives.