The ICIDS 2025 Art Exhibition invites artists to submit interactive digital artworks that explore the theme of Kaleidoscopic Machines in an era of accelerated entanglements. The exhibition will take place in Malta from 1–5 December 2025, as part of the 18th International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling (ICIDS).
In parallel with the call for papers, this year’s curatorial theme draws inspiration from media theorist Janet H. Murray’s notion of kaleidoscopic machines—systems of storytelling that harness the affordances of digital media to generate multilinear, multiform, and reconfigurable narrative experiences. In these systems, stories unfold not as fixed arcs but as shifting constellations of meaning, co-shaped by both machines and interactors. This year we invite artists to imagine digital artworks as kaleidoscopic machines: ever-shifting systems of reflection, refraction, diffraction, transformation, and multiplicity. We are interested in how these machines (IDNs) are being created and reconfigured in recent years marked by technological acceleration and, at the same time, how these processes reflect and reconfigure the entanglements between humans, more-than-humans, and non-humans (AI, planetary material structures, platforms, etc.).
Practices of IDNs development, as kaleidoscopic machines, shaped by technological acceleration, can now be reimagined and rethought as material ecosystems and entangled processes of creation. In these assemblages, machines are no longer merely tools, but generative, sympoietic, refractive, speculative, and participatory systems in which narrative elements fracture, loop, combine, mutate, hallucinate, or multiply in response to agential interaction and algorithmic processes.
We particularly welcome works that engage with Generative AI (and beyond), understood as a critical site of inquiry, poetic invention, and cultural speculation. How much AI do we want involved in the shaping of our interactive digital narratives (IDNs)? What happens when authorship, imagination, agency, and interpretation are distributed across multiple agencies and entities? We invite submissions that explore these questions through forms such as algorithmic storytelling, speculative interfaces, autonomous agents, and AI-based collaboration. We are especially interested in works that challenge conventional modes of narrative and interactivity—works that are nonlinear, emergent, iterative, and refracted. Nonetheless, we also welcome other creative approaches to IDNs.
We invite artists to think about IDNs as interfaces for experiencing stories and meaning through multiple lenses—reflecting the complexity of the accelerated world we live in—and as opportunities to empathise with multiple forms of “otherness”.
We invite submissions of interactive digital works including (but not limited to):
Note: Artworks must be completed by the time of the exhibition and not merely at concept stage. Technology demonstrations or works-in-progress may be more appropriate for the Late-Breaking Works track of ICIDS. All submitted works will be reviewed by a jury. Selected pieces will be exhibited in the physical exhibition space and included in the online exhibition catalog. Authors are encouraged to write an accompanying article or paper about their work, to be published by Carnegie Mellon ETC Press in an ISBN-numbered volume.
Submissions must include:
Selected artists will be included in the official ICIDS 2025 Art catalog, published as part of the Interactive Storytelling series by Carnegie Mellon ETC Press (ISBN).
Submissions should provide details of the required equipment, and specify what will be provided by the artists themselves. ICIDS is unable to provide financial assistance. The organization will attempt to offer some assistance with equipment and manpower for installation, but artists are encouraged to provide their own equipment and to be present during setup whenever possible. The curators will be happy to provide a reference letter to assist artists in applying for external funding.
👉 Submit your work at: https://forms.gle/WH93g4dFJbJQisxu9
Please contact the art track chairs:
📧Jaime Rodriguez [j.rodriguezgomez@uniandes.edu.co]
📧Nelson Vera [nj.vera22@uniandes.edu.co]
📧Terhi Marttila [terhi.marttila@iki.fi]
For more information about ICIDS 2025 and the full conference program, visit:
https://icids2025.ardin.online/
This year, the exhibition will take place in Valletta, the capital of Malta, in conjunction with the ICIDS 2025 conference.
The exhibition runs from 1-5 December, with the opening taking place on December 1st (GMT).
** There will also be an online opening of the exhibition around the time of the conference. **
** Please note, in order for ICIDS to support the most inclusive art exhibition from all over the globe, accepted artists will not have to pay registration fees for the conference. **
The exhibition jury will prioritize works based on the following criteria (in order of relevance):
Let the machines dream. Let the stories glitch. Let the patterns multiply. Let the kaleidoscope turn. (CHAT-GPT 2025 and us)
We look forward to your submissions.
– ICIDS 2025 Art Exhibition Curatorial Team