B-Seite Festival in Mannheim , GER

Digital art operates at the intersection of technology, perception, and social reflection. It combines image, sound, movement, data, and space into open, interactive systems that can not only be viewed, but also experienced and co-created. Aesthetic strategies meet technical processes, playful approaches meet critical questions—and open up new perspectives on the present and the future.

The 16th edition of B-Seite – Festival for Visual Art and Contemporary Culture – is dedicated to these processes with a curated exhibition and a performance program. Both formats explore how digital art can be experienced as an aesthetic and social practice. In the exhibition, interactive video installations, spatial interfaces, and AI-supported works combine digital systems with physical presence, allowing the audience to become part of the artistic process. Topics such as the environment, resource consumption, artificial intelligence, and identity are not only presented but also actively negotiated.

The performance program expands these perspectives with live audiovisual formats in which artists work with generative images, electronic sound, sensor technology, light, and live drawing. Many works are created only in the moment of performance and with audience participation. Digital space is not understood as a rigid medium, but as a dynamic field for new forms of perception, interaction, and collectivity.

Both program lines are characterized by experimentation. The B-side promotes an open approach to digital technologies beyond mere innovation and efficiency and understands digital art as a space for thinking, feeling, and acting. Questions of accessibility, participation, and responsibility play a central role. This creates a space that combines aesthetic experience, technological exploration, and social discourse.