Stephanie Meisl – Biography
The media & concept artist stephanie meisl, s.myselle, is A hybrid between art and creative industries. She is an artist, an keynote speaker, doing workshops, engaged in panel discussions, debating in philosophical discussions, thinking about digital humanism, producing ai-film, dealing with algorithms in any form, and focuses on AI and new technology.
Stephanie Meisl has been involved with visual media since the age of 17. She started her career as a live visual performance artist with the artist collective Viewphone. She was one of the first VJs in Salzburg. Under the stage name C’quence, she joined the DJ/VJ collective Azubischall Deluxe. She toured Europe with her visuals and won the VJ LAB-Visuals Contest in Salzburg in 2004. The technical transformation from analogue to digital became her constant companion – both friend and foe. The social disruption triggered by media is reflected in her works.
In 2003, she joined the media art festival Schmiede Hallein as a member, which was awarded the Austrian Art Prize in 2016. This is where the majority of her works were created.
She spent the years 2013-2015 in Paris. During this time she made many fashion films, of which the art film Is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream with artists from the Paris Mugler Follies Cabaret debuted at the Copenhagen Fashion Film Festival.
From 2006-2008 Stephanie Meisl lived in the USA and completed a Master of Arts in Communication. During this time she was awarded the KOA HAMMER AWARD of Excellence for the Creative Tactics.
After Paris, she returned to Vienna in 2015 and founded a film production and visual media company C’quence (GmbH) with her long-time visuals colleague Alexandra Braschel (The GmbH was closed in 2023).
In 2018, she came into contact with the topic of artificial intelligence (AI) for the first time and processed her research and emotions about it in 2019 in the visual installation digital terrorism. 2.0.
In 2020, the theme of art and artificial intelligence manifested itself in a residency at Schmiede Hallein. This research became an important basis for further artistic work under her new alias S.Myselle. With OK, Computer. I want full manual control now, she takes a step back into her own past and seeks new ways of media art with AI technologies. In 2021, she was honoured with the Media Art Prize in Salzburg.
In 2022, together with Scharmien Zandi and Sarah Scherer, she established D#AVANTGARDE, a new technology, creativity and art Collective, intending to bridge new technologies and traditional arts. D#AVANTGARDE projects started with „Schiele’s Ghost“ – an AI-NFT project by s.myselle and Martin Gasser, „Amour Fou“ – a cross-over between music, literature, artificial intelligence and theatre by Scharmien Zandi, Sarah Scherer, and s.myselle, and „The Closest It Gets to God“ – where AI interprets the Bible as a digital preacher.
More about these projects, other collaborations and projects can be found at www.davantgarde.xyz
As a keynote speaker and panelist at international conferences, curator of AI-Art exhibitions, and a widely interviewed thought leader, she has established herself as a key figure in Austria’s creative and artistic AI-landscape.
Stephanie’s innovative approach to emerging technologies continues to earn recognition from peers and critics alike. At the forefront of AI and new media, she experiences to integrate these advancements into her artistic practice, inspiring audiences along the way.
Her engagement with new technologies not only supports her creative work but also drives her commitment to digital literacy. In 2023, she was honored with the Content Vienna Digital Literacy Award by the Wirtschaftsagentur Wien for her contributions in the field of AI.
Stephanie started to investigate the dynamics of influencer culture and digital identity through her digital twin, s.myselle. This project pushes the boundaries of digital art, performance, and self-expression, interrogating the complexities of AI influencers and chatbots. Her work raises critical questions about digital humanism and the authenticity of virtual realities. Through multilayered social media performances, she fuses artistic vision with contemporary digital culture, continuously questioning: „How real is the digital reality?„
In September 2024, she was appointed Vice Chair of the Creative Industry Council for the Austrian Chamber of Labour and Economy, further solidifying her role as an advocate for the creative industries.
In 2025 she started „The blue danube project“, a multi-angle generative AI storytelling experiment.
At its core, Stephanie’s work remains anchored in a fundamental inquiry: What does it truly mean to be human in the age of machines?
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