BERLIN – Ars Electronica, the venerable digital arts festival held each September in Linz, Austria, always makes a splash. And this year is no exception.

Take sperm-racing, for example, which fits perfectly with this year's theme: sex.

"NEXT SEX: Sex in the Age of Its Procreative Superfluousness," which begins Saturday, picks up pretty much where last year's ground-breaking "Life Sciences" festival left off.

"Sperm-racing" may sound like a mere gag, but the Ars Electronica folks are serious about their fun, and have fun in their seriousness.

So, yes sirree, the little critters will be a-wrigglin' and a-racin'. And anyone who shows up in the main square in Linz next week will be able to make his own, uh, contribution to the event.

"There is a big container in the main square of the city, in a public space where everyone can go," said Gerfried Stocker, the festival's director. "It's called the CASA, Computer Assisted Sperm Analyzer, and with this thing you can measure or determine the quality of sperm, the density, the mobility, the speed, the pH value, and this kind of thing."

See, we told you they were serious.

"We measure the speed, and make your ranking with all the people. The women can bet on their favorites," Stocker said in a telephone interview. "You fill out a form along with your donation. Muscles? Education? What car you drive?"

If fast cars substitute for sexual performance, the automobile information is, in fact, an important piece of information for the contest, Stocker said.

"It's meant rather as a funny and ironic project, of course," he said. "By looking at these questionnaires, the women can say who they think is the sexually most powerful male, who has the fastest sperm, and every evening we have the sperm race.

"The person who wins can stay anonymous, or maybe reveal himself and become the big darling of everyone here."

Sure makes 200-meter dash seem pathetic by comparison, now doesn't it? But Stocker insists there is a serious aspect to the Sperm Olympics.

"It's really about the whole discussion about how the quality of sperm in the Western world is constantly reducing," Stocker said. "This is very often used as an argument by very right-wing and racist people. If you're strong and do a lot of sports, it doesn't mean you have the better sperm. There is also no correlation with race or nationality. Still, there is this very stereotypical picture of all this."

And of course, there are souvenirs. Not the magazines and videos available in a booth set up for potential sample-producers. No, those stay. The souvenirs are photographs.

"You can get nice photos of your sperm racing, blown up a thousand times," Stocker said.

Last year's focus on life sciences generated a lively debate, including detailed treatment of such topics as designer babies.

This year's festival will take that inquiry further, and while next year's theme is not yet decided, chances are it will continue to build on the topic of sex.

"The idea of Ars Electronica is always to deal with areas where new technologies are starting to have an impact on culture and society," Stocker said. "This is definitely starting to be true for genetic engineering and life sciences, which has a stronger impact now than information technology, because information technology has kind of (become) saturated in its ability to create new social and cultural paradigms."

Those who cannot attend can follow from afar.

Chicago artist Eduardo Kac, for example, was one of the hits of last year's festival with his transgenic "Genesis" project and his plans for an art project involving a dog genetically engineered to have a fluorescent green coat. The project has moved ahead, using a bunny instead of a dog.

"Ars Electronica has emerged as the leading festival examining the relationship between art, science, technology, and culture," said Kac, who will be unable to attend this year. "After 20 years, it has shown great vision and courage under the leadership of Gerfried Stocker, as it changed its primary focus from electronic media to biotechnology. Reproductive technologies are one of the driving forces of this new area, with many promises and problems."

Some of the higher-profile projects at the festival will be Marta de Menezes' butterfly exhibit, in which the artist makes up her own wing patterns by "targeted interventions into the development process"; and Tissue Culture and Art by Australians Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr, and Guy Ben-Ary of Israel. The latter project uses actual tissue cultures as a medium for art.

Stocker said that these kinds of projects "address the moral and ethical questions, like, is it OK for artists to do this? We say it's OK for scientists to do this, but what about artists?

"I think it's very important that artists do this, because it's more or less the only way to create some free space in this type of research," he said. "If you limit this work only to science and technology, only mainstream values will be followed. Artists create in a different way and have different values. Artists participating in this research guarantees free space for ideas that go against mainstream values."

Like sperm racing.