[ISEA2023] Paper: Juergen Hagler, Wolfgang Hochleitner, Patrick Proier & Christoph Schaufler — Looking Back on 10 Years of Expanded Animation Symposium: Organizing, Documenting and Archiving Together with Students

Abstract

Third Summit on New Media Art Archiving

Keywords: Expanded Animation, Symposium, Education, Digital Art, Media Art Histories, Archive

The Expanded Animation Symposium is an annual event at the media art festival Ars Electronica. Since 2013 the symposium has featured 200 experts (i.e., artists, researchers, cultural workers, and curators) in the expanded field of animation.

The video and online documentation are essential because the conference focuses mainly on lectures, artistic presentations, and panel discussions. Such symposia on animation and media art are only possible through cooperation with different partners (e.g., festivals, institutions, and universities). In many cases, a big challenge is the low level of funding and restricted resources.

In the case of the Expanded Animation Symposium, cooperation between Ars Electronica and the Department of Digital Media at the University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria and other partners enabled the production of such an event in the context of media education. Students attended relevant media production courses and were included in the organization of the symposium as equal partners. This article explains the various tasks of organizing, documenting, and archiving the symposium and shows how students successfully became part of this process over the last ten years.

  • Dr. Juergen Hagler is an academic researcher and curator working at the interface of animation, game, and media art. He studied art education, experimental visual design, and cultural studies at the University for Art and Design Linz, Austria. Currently, he is a Professor of Computer Animation and Media Studies and the head of studies of the bachelor’s and master’s program Digital Arts at the University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria, Hagenberg Campus. Since 2014 he has been the co-head of the research group Playful Interactive Environments. He has been involved in the activities of Ars Electronica since 1997 in a series of different functions. Since 2017 he has been the director of the Ars Electronica Animation Festival and initiator and organizer of the Expanded Animation Symposium.
  • Wolfgang Hochleitner is a lecturer and researcher at the Department of Digital Media and the research groups Playful Interactive Environments (PIE) and Web Intelligence and Innovation Laboratory. He teaches the fundamentals of clientside web technologies and server-side backend development. He also teaches the fundamentals of game design and game production in computer games. His research focus is on the area of co-located large public display games. His ongoing dissertation project describes a framework for describing playful experiences in a large public display context.
  • Patrick Proier is an Assistant Professor for Computer Animation at the Department Digital Media at the University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria and part of the research group Playful Interactive Environments (PIE). He teaches 2D Animation, Motion Graphics, Video Technology, Post-Prodction and Compositing, Visual Effects, and Virtual Production. His research focuses on real-time Effects, Augmented Reality, and Virtual Production.
  • Always on the lookout for the good tone, Christoph Schaufler moves between music production, sound design, and audio post-production for film, animation, and games as a recording and mixing sound engineer. As a long-standing assistant professor in the Media Technology and Design and Digital Arts programs at the Hagenberg campus, the transfer of knowledge and conception of up-to-date course content plays a major role in his everyday professional life.