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Digital Cultures is a festival celebrating audiovisual culture, highlighting topics related to digital art.
DIGITAL CULTURES 2026 - COLLECTIVE RESONANCE
In an era defined by algorithmic fragmentation and digital isolation, the 2026 edition of Digital Cultures serves as a radical laboratory for Collective Resonance. We are moving beyond the tradition of solitary immersion to explore the digital as a relational field, a space where technology no longer acts as a screen between us, but as the very fabric that binds us together.
This year, the festival investigates the concept of the technology of togetherness. We shift our focus from the "individual user" to the "collective organism," asking how immersive systems can foster empathy, mutual responsibility, and shared breath. We treat code not as a set of commands, but as a social score: a choreography that invites us to move, think, and feel in unison with others and the environment.
Digital Cultures 2026 is an assembly. It is an invitation to inhabit the in-between spaces of our digital lives and transform them into common ground. We are here to prove that in the hands of the collective, technology becomes an instrument of care, a vessel for resonance, and a tool for building a more interconnected world.
Festival sections
(panel discussions and meet-ups are held in English)
Lectures and panels by international experts dedicated to contemporary industry challenges
SEPTEMBER
Collaborative industry meet-ups designed for creators, curators, and cultural professionals to explore international production logic and the future of digital arts, bridging the gap between local innovation and the global creative market.
MAY-AUGUST
Rendez-vous Créatif: PL-FR
Polish-French Dialogues on the Future of Digital Arts
Initiated and curated by Digital Cultures in partnership with the Adam Mickiewicz Institute and Institute Français, the Rendez-vous Créatif: PL-FR series is hosted by the Embassy of France in Poland. Together, we are creating a cross-cultural forum for artists, researchers, and tech-visionaries to explore the artistic and production aspects of the industry.
Online Consultations
To support our community of visionaries, we are launching exclusive curatorial consultations with Anna Szylar. These one-on-one sessions provide a critical space to refine your narrative, scale your project for international audiences, and align your work with the global media arts landscape. Do you have an XR project and don't know what's next? Let's talk! Digital Cultures curator Anna Szylar invites you to free online consultations.
Topics we can discuss include global distribution and festival strategy to plan your XR project's journey through the most important industry events worldwide, fundraising and partnerships to look for funds for the development and production of innovative digital projects, project development and production to turn a concept into a finished product, and exhibition organization to best present new media art in gallery spaces and beyond.
Team
Anna Szylar
Founder of Monster Mind Studio, curator, and a cultural manager with over a decade of experience in international collaboration within the immersive media field. She initiated and curated the Digital Cultures festival and has been a propagator and promoter of Polish art, building its recognition through collaborations with festivals such as SXSW, MUTEK, Tribeca Film Festival, and Sheffield Doc Fest. From 2014 to 2021, she was associated with the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, and later with the Visual Narratives Laboratory (vnLab), where she was responsible for VR distribution and international relations. She is a frequent speaker and moderator at international industry conferences. Anna Szylar also serves as a program advisor for IDFA DocLab, one of the world's leading festivals dedicated to interactive and immersive documentary. Her curatorial work includes exhibitions such as "Ground Control" during the Venice Film Festival (2023), Mixer Festival (2024) and MDAG Vision (2025). She is also an alumna of the prestigious Biennale College Cinema Immersive program, through which her Monster Mind Studio is producing the VR piece "Channelers" (2025), directed by Jakub Wróblewski. Her past and present partners include the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, vnLab, IDFA DocLab, Millennium Docs Against Gravity Festival, Biennale di Venezia, the Korea Foundation, the panGenerator collective, and numerous cultural festivals and institutions in Poland and abroad.
Pola Komarowa
Multimedia artist, born in Belarus, PhD student at the Doctoral School of the Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow. She creates in Warsaw, combining photographic practices, photogrammetry, point clouds and digital scans. Author of video works, photography and VR experiences that explore identity, oppression, trauma and memory space.
Past editions
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