ISTANBUL DIGITAL ART FESTIVAL 2026, the 6th Edition

3-7 June 2026 / Atatürk Cultural Center (AKM), Istanbul
Curated by NODE Media Lab

Artists:

Olaf Bender a.k.a. Byetone, Can Büyükberber, Luna Ikuta, Immerea Studio with Flavia Mazzanti, InferStudio, Mümün Keser, Steven Mark Kübler, Flora Miranda, Dagmar Schürrer, Calin Segal, Buşra Tunç, Doğa Ünyaylar, Ke Jyun Wu.

Curated by NODE Media Lab under the festival’s theme Retell: Reconstructing Value, Creativity, and Hope, the selection explored what creativity means in an automated age.

In a world increasingly mediated by artificial intelligence, algorithms, and sensory machines, the act of retelling becomes both a form of resistance and a means of reconstruction. NODE Media Lab’s curatorial selection for the 2026 edition of the Istanbul Digital Art Festival explores how artists are redefining the cultural value of creativity, where intelligence, whether human or artificial, becomes a shared field of experience.

The works presented here challenge the perception of technology as neutral or detached. From AI-generated aesthetics to robotic ecosystems, immersive light architectures, and data-driven performances, each artist reconstructs value through process and participation. Their practices embrace the hybrid, merging organic and synthetic, individual and collective, physical and virtual.

Selected artworks explore the core questions of the festival’s theme: What is value, and who defines it in the age of automation? Through generative and algorithmic processes, as well as immersive systems of light, motion, and sound, the exhibition creates environments that invite sensory interaction. These immersive experiences transform technological systems into spaces for human inquiry rather than mere spectacle.

This framework expands the conversation about biological, material, and alchemical processes, while also exploring robotic approaches as a means of coexistence, care, and relational design. It examines the hidden infrastructures of labor, materiality, and data through textiles, sculpture, and spatial narratives, offering a sonic and experimental perspective grounded in Istanbul’s media ecology. The exploration culminates in large-scale interactive installations that blur the boundaries between illusion and presence, and between digital abstraction and embodied experience.

By bringing together this diverse range of practices, NODE Media Lab positions artistic production as a means to rebuild hope through technological intimacy, critical awareness, and aesthetic experimentation. Instead of providing fixed answers, the exhibition presents art as an active space for reimagining narratives: a place where value, meaning, and creativity can be collectively redefined in the digital age.