When art meets science and artificial intelligence enters the scene, visions of the future emerge that transcend disciplinary boundaries. At Ars Electronica 2025, taking place from September 3 to 7 in Linz, the new Impact Initiative demonstrates how creative minds from medicine, technology, and the arts work together to develop responses to pressing societal challenges – not in a laboratory, but in an open, interdisciplinary experimental space.

The initiative was launched through a partnership between the Ludwig Boltzmann Gesellschaft (LBG), Johannes Kepler University Linz (JKU), and Ars Electronica. The LBG Open Innovation in Science (OIS) Center initiated a broad interdisciplinary process shaped by a team of artists, curators, medical professionals, life scientists, AI researchers, and open innovation experts.
“With the new Impact Initiative, we have succeeded in establishing a milestone in the innovative collaboration of diverse fields spanning technology, healthcare, and open innovation,” says Dr. Georg Russegger, initiator of the Impact Initiative and head of the Open Innovation in Science Center at the Ludwig Boltzmann Gesellschaft.

The goal is to first identify current challenges across different areas and then develop prototype solutions for them in a hackathon. The results will be presented on Friday, September 5, at the Ars Electronica Conference, together with partners such as the EIT Health KIC and the EIT Culture & Creative KIC (Knowledge and Innovation Communities).

One Year of Interdisciplinary Preparation

For nearly a year, the LBG OIS Center has been working with the Institute for Transformative Change (Lift_c) at JKU, Ars Electronica, and other partners on the collaborative development and conceptualization of the Impact Initiative on AI, Art, and Health. With the support of the Fund for the Future of Austria (FZÖ), the LBG and JKU established an interdisciplinary expert panel bringing together leading researchers, artists, and scientists — including three Ludwig Boltzmann Institutes (LBIs) as well as JKU’s Faculty of Medicine and the Linz Institute of Technology.

In the run-up to the Ars Electronica Festival 2025, the group identified future societal and scientific challenges and defined three thematic areas. These were translated into specific challenges for a three-day hackathon. A call for participation in summer 2025 selected over 25 participants from a wide range of scientific and artistic disciplines. The developed solutions will be presented on Wednesday evening, September 3, at the JKU Faculty of Medicine campus. The results will then be showcased to the public through exhibitions and conference sessions at Ars Electronica.

Impact Initiative Symposium: Art, Medicine, and Technology in Dialogue

Under the title “Cross-Sectoral Collaboration: The Arts Meet HealthTech,” the Ars Electronica Festival Conference on the afternoon of September 5 will focus on the dialogue between art, medicine, and technology.

The program includes panel discussions on the use of art in medical education, a presentation of the interdisciplinary sleep project The Dream in Experience, insights from the Impact Initiative hackathon, and European development dialogues among innovation networks under the theme “The Future of Arts & Health Industries Encounters,” exploring future collaborations between the arts and healthcare. The event concludes with a keynote by Jill Sonke on art as a public health mandate, followed by a discussion on art in medical environments.