Artistic Visions in the Future of Health, Medicine and Wellbeing | open call

Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria call for submissions on Artistic Visions in the Future of Health, Medicine and Wellbeing, for its Sparks project. Three selected artists will have support and production budget to make work in partnership with futurologists and scientists for a European touring exhibition and be part of a science cafe at the European Parliament.

We are looking for artists to create artistic visions of new technologies in health, medicine and wellbeing to visualize possible developments within the next five to ten years. We expect a diversity of artistic, speculative design and exemplary ideas, as well as disruptive out of the box thinking to make such future developments more tangible.
A main question is how technological innovations will influence the life and wellbeing of patients, citizens, doctors and other involved stakeholders, such as industry, policy makers and insurance companies. Applying artists should be interested in creating and building ideas and prototypes that will impressively visualize their visions.

This is a unique opportunity to question, provoke and interrogate this area of research through artistic and scientific discourse. The selected three artists will work at Ars Electronica with futurologists and scientists on the development of their artistic vision on technology in health, medicine and wellbeing.

Topic and Questions

The project examines technology shifts that are realistically attainable within the next 5-10 years and will touch the following areas:

• How digitalizing and measuring our lives and bodies influences the development in health technology and supervision.


• How new trends in technology influence holistic wellbeing and mood/behavioral persuasion.


• How technology enables diverse bio modifications (eg., bio hacking, tissue engineering, organ on a chip).


• How technology and big data help forecasting problematic regions, preventing epidemics, fighting antibiotics resistance etc.


• How automation and robotics may influence medicine, health and wellbeing.


• How technology and scientific developments will enhance the understanding of and intervention on the human body on a genetic and neurological level.

Sparks is an engagement project on the topic of technology shifts in health, medicine and wellbeing. To raise awareness about this topic an interactive touring exhibition and 230 innovative participatory activities such as science cafés, pop-up science shops, incubation activities and scenario workshops will be organized.

Each selected artist will produce an artwork that is part of the touring exhibition. Moreover, each artist will be featured in a short video to the project explaining his/her visions. They will also take part in a science café at the European Parliament in 2017 that will be organised by Sparks.

The conception phase together with futurologists from the Ars Electronica Futurelab and scientists from the field will take place between October and December 2015.

SEE WEBSITE for how to apply (first stage is submission of a visionary video statement on the theme) and the production budget, fee and support funding available for selected artists.

DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS: 23 September 2015

About Sparks

Sparks is an ambitious awareness-raising and engagement European project (Horizon 2020-funded) that aims at promoting the concept of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) amongst citizens and other stakeholders in 29 European countries (28 Member States of the European Union and Switzerland) through the organisation of two major activities:

• an interactive and creative touring exhibition involving artists in the design process;


• participatory activities adopting innovative formats (such as science cafés, pop-up science shops, incubation activities and scenario workshops) to better engage people in scientific topics