ReconFigure, IAS.

This week, on 22–23 October, the RIXC Art Science Festival 2026 “Climate Imagination” will take place at the National Library of Latvia (NLL), 3 Mūkusalas Street, Riga, and online. This year, the festival will bring together international artists, researchers, and cultural professionals, offering artistic experiments, participatory workshops, discussions, a keynote lecture, and two exhibitions to collectively explore how art and science can expand our climate imagination.

On Friday, 23 October, at 16:30, in the National Library of Latvia on the 11th floor, the festival symposium will conclude with a special session offering the first public preview – outlook – of the Immersive Art Symposium and Exhibition “Extending Realities”, part of the official programme of Liepāja 2027 – European Capital of Culture, within the Core Series of Discursive Events “Agora of Values”.

The ambitious extended reality (XR) art programme, featuring a symposium and exhibition, will be organised by the RIXC Center for New Media Culture in collaboration with the Immersive Arts Space (IASpace) at Zurich University of the Arts. The collaboration between RIXC and the Immersive Arts Space (Zurich) will lay the foundation for a new phase of long-term Baltic–Nordic cooperation (Baltic STS), bringing together artistic research, Science and Technology Studies (STS), ecological field research, and extended reality (XR) practices in this region.

During the closing session, RIXC curator and artist Rasa Šmite and Philippe Sormani, lead researcher at the Immersive Arts Space in Zurich, will offer insights into the conceptual development of the upcoming programme, tracing the transition from “Climate Imagination” – the central theme of the RIXC Art Science Festival 2026 – to “Extending Realities”, the theme of RIXC’s upcoming XR art programme in Liepāja in 2027.

From 9 to 12 September 2027, the Immersive Art Symposium and Exhibition “Extending Realities”, held at the Great Amber Concert Hall in Liepāja, will invite audiences to a large-scale extended reality (XR) art programme on September 9–12, 2027, in Liepāja, at the concert hall “Great Amber”. Visitors will be invited to experience how immersive technologies transform art into a spatial experience — from virtual reality to artificial intelligence and spatial visualisations of scientific data — where reality is not represented, but sensorially experienced.

The programme will function as an “open laboratory”, where artists, scientists and technology innovators will engage in dialogue with audiences about the changing realities of our time — environment and climate, natural and artificial intelligence, the future of the planet and cosmic perspectives — inviting us to sense, reflect and redefine our relationship with the world.

The programme is thematically based in RIXC’s long-term practice — from the legendary Acoustic Space Lab symposium at the Irbene radio telescope 25 years ago to RIXC’s latest immersive artwork Deep Sensing, in which reality is expanded through the interaction of environmental data with cosmic signals. At the core of the programme is a collaboration with the experimental and interactive experiences of the Immersive Art Space of Swiss colleagues, where viewers become active participants rather than observers, challenging our perception of reality through our senses and the presence of the physical body.

More information on the festival website: https://festival2026.rixc.org/ 

Registration for the festival symposium via Eventbrite: https://ej.uz/rixcfestival2026tickets 

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The festival is produced by the RIXC Center for New Media Culture:

Festival Curators: Rasa Šmite and Raitis Šmits
Festival Producer: Agnese Baranova (agnese@rixc.org)
Festival and Press Coordinator: Lelde Gūtmane (rixc@rixc.org)
Symposium Coordinator: Daina Siliņa (daina@rixc.org)
PR Strategy Coordinator: Līva Siliņa (rixc@rixc.org)

Supporters and Partners:
State Culture Capital Foundation, Riga City Council, Pro Helvetia, the European Union's Creative Europe Programme within the framework of the “EMAP Expanded” project, Nordic Culture Point, LG Electronics, Liepāja 2027 Foundation, Reverie, Arts Council Tokyo.

Media Partners:
Arterritory, We Make Money Not Art, Satori, Echo Gone Wrong.

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Media Contacts:
Lelde Gūtmane, Festival and Press Coordinator, +371 28365323
Agnese Baranova, Festival Producer, +371 29635167
Līva Siliņa, PR Strategy Coordinator, +371 25358541

RIXC Center for New Media Culture / RIXC Gallery / Festival Information Center
Address: Lenču Street 2, Riga, LV-1010, Latvia
Email: rixc@rixc.org
Phone: +371 26546776 (office)
www.rixc.org | https://festival2026.rixc.org/