Open Call | ONX Seeds 2026

As human-made books and images become the exception and algorithmic production becomes the norm, the digital is no longer confined to or emanating from the screen. It permeates the body, clothing, objects, sound, the street, the room, the community, while also returning to the screen as a space for storytelling, connection, and imagination. ONX Seeds is looking for projects that give these signals new forms: images, objects, environments, and rituals that can be seen, touched, worn, inhabited, played, and shared.

ONX Seeds invites new media creators, creative technologists, designers, game developers, and interdisciplinary teams to develop functional prototypes that move between the analog and the digital, the material and the networked, the personal and the collective.

The program supports early-stage, proof-of-concept projects that approach technology not as intangible infrastructure, but as a material for experience, imagination, and design: something that can be worn, touched, heard, inhabited, played, and activated with others.

The handmade digital, or analog-digital, is neither a nostalgic return to the analog nor a retreat from the screen. It is a way of thinking about the digital as embodied, everyday, tangible, networked, and deeply cultural. We are interested in projects that emerge within multiple algorithmic micro-realities: self-organized communities, bodies mediated by interfaces, online and offline rituals, objects that take on new functions, as well as screens, images, sounds, games, animations, videos, apps, and platforms that generate new forms of identity, desire, and collective imagination.

We are looking for proposals influenced by subcultures, micro-communities, fandoms, and digital pop cultures: from manga, anime, K-pop, cosplay, video games, and streetwear to digital idols, collectibles, internet memes, sounds, moving images, and everyday urban economies. These references should function not simply as aesthetic influences, nor solely as material or spatial objects, but as living spaces of translation, connection, and belonging, in which a mass-produced image can become a personal symbol, a shared signal, a screen-based experience, a participatory environment, or a world in the making.

Proposals may take the form of interactive installations, moving-image works, videos, screen-based narratives, immersive experiences, new media performances, generative systems, playable worlds, or speculative design objects: from analog-digital objects and garments to digital games, apps, platforms and participatory environments. Particular emphasis will be placed on projects that activate audiences not simply as viewers, but as participants or users within an image, screen, environment, scenario, social system, game, ritual, or world taking shape.

Through a four-month artistic development program, ONX Seeds will support up to four prototypes with funding, production, artistic, curatorial, and technical guidance and access to the new ONX Studio at Onassis Ready in Athens. Selected projects will evolve from initial concepts into artistically compelling, technologically functional prototypes and will be presented at the ONX Showcase in Athens in March 2027.

• Emerging creators, artists, and teams working with new media, digital culture, and hybrid forms of storytelling
• New media creators, creative technologists, speculative, fashion, product, and game designers, developers, sound and visual artists, innovators, and makers
• Greek and international creators and teams.

• Seed funding of up to €5,000 to develop a prototype
• Access to the new ONX Studio in Athens.
• Tailored mentorship from field experts
• Technical, artistic, and production support
• Presentation of the project at the ONX Showcase in Athens in March 2027
• Connections to the ONX Studio in New York
• Further development and presentation opportunities through the Onassis ONX partner network.

ONX Seeds aims to address the challenges of creating digital productions by supporting creators throughout the development of an idea, from initial conception through prototype development and, ultimately, to presenting an artistically accomplished, technologically functional, and financially sustainable work. ONX Seeds seeks to bring emerging creators to the forefront of the international digital arts scene and make their work accessible to diverse audiences.