Winners of Prix Ars Electronica 2019
The Linz-based Ars Electronica Festival announced the winners of the Golden Nicas 2019 today. This year, the Prix Ars Electronica Award received 3,256 submission from 82 countries. The Prix Ars Electronica is the oldest award in the field of electronic, interactive art and computer animation and is being bestowed since 1987.
From VR Film on Bipolar Disorder to Scents of Labour
The Golden Nica awards went to artists from Canada, namely to Kalina Bertin, Sandra Rodriguez, Nicolas S. Roy and Fred Casia in the category Computer Animation (for “Manic”, a VR film on bipolar disorder); to Paul Vanouse from the USA in the category Artificial Intelligence & Life Art (for “Labour”, a self-regulating art installation on the smell of work-related stress); to Peter Kutin in the category of Digital Musics (for sound sculpture TORSO#1); and to Alex Lazarov from Vienna in the Austria-wide category — CREATE YOUR WORLD.
Trailer of “Manic”, a VR film exploring the condition of bipolar disorder by Kalina Bertin, Sandra Rodriguez, Nicolas S. Roy and Fred Casia from Canada:
Awards of Distinction
Each year, Prix Ars Electronica also bestows two Awards of Distinctions per category and up to twelve Honorary Mentions per category. In the category Computer Animation, two artists were given Awards of Distinction: Ruini Chi (China) for the project “Strings”, a retro-flavoured animation that questions the implications of the new technologies, and Cindy Coutant (France) for “Undershot: sensitive data, Cristiano” about her fascination with Cristiano Ronaldo.
In the Artificial Intelligence & Life Art category the Awards of Distinction included a three-part series “Confronting Vegetal Otherness” on “human-plant kinship and co-performativity from the molecular to the ecological realm” by Špela Petrič (Slovenia); and “VFRAME: Visual Forensics and Metadata Extraction” by Adam Harvey (US), a research project exploring how computer vision can be applied to human rights research.
In the Young Professionals category an Award of Distinction was bestowed to “Rake – Minimize your Information” by Tessa Aichelburg, Luis Hofmeister, Lukas Kaufmann, Paul Schreiber. The algorithm filters the abundance of information in today’s news channels to reduce media consumption.
The Golden Nicas will be formally presented on September 5, 2019, as part of the grand opening event of the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria.