Prix Ars Electronica

Photo: Ars Electronica / Martin Hieslmair

Winners 2023

With 3,176 projects submitted from 98 countries, the 2023 Prix Ars Electronica once again presents itself as a central hub in the global network of media art. The prizewinners will receive 10,000 euros each for the “Golden Nicas” that have been awarded annually since 1987 by an international jury and a prominent appearance at the Ars Electronica Festival. Congratulations to the award winners!

New Animation Art
Digital Musics & Sound Art
AI & Life Art
u19 – create your world

Isao Tomita Special Prize
Ars Electronica Award for Digital Humanity

The 2023 Jury
2023 Jury Statements
All winners since 1987

New Animation Art

Golden Nica

Delivery Dancer’s Sphere

Ayoung Kim (KR)

“It is a speculative fiction set in the delirious world that emerges between the everyday normal reality pre-pandemic and the new digitally intermediated pandemic reality. (…) The jury found that Ayoung Kim’s combination of philosophy, topology, and classical physics with excellent visual storytelling creates a highly successful portrayal of the emerging multi-layered and uncontrollable world we inhabit.”

Photo: Ayoung Kim

Award of Distinction

IT’S DANGEROUS TO GO ALONE! TAKE THIS

Bassam Issa (IE)

“(…) a world of subtle storytelling filled with hyper-synthetic visuals. In this world, journeys seemingly never end, and preconceived narratives and habitual perceptions of masculinity are pushed and challenged. Operating in the gap between the fantasy and reality, Al Sabah draws us into their seductive journey of metamorphosis and fluidity, queer possibility, destruction and decay, set against scenes of resilience and rebirth.”

Award of Distinction

Oneroom-Babel

SANGHEE (KR)

“(…) The jury appreciated the direct nature of the work through the very appropriate, simple yet convincing use of the medium to produce a truly embodied and immersive experience of grim life situations that are often portrayed too abstractly. The jury commands the work’s simplicity and efficiency, which successfully frames a set of interviews portraying the lived experience of Korean youth inhabiting the spaces on display, that can resonate with all viewers.”

Honorary Mention

Distant Distraction, Foul Breach, Separate Sensation

Lark Spartin (CA)

“(…) The jury very much applauds the work’s playful elicitation of the disembodiment that the social media use of AR platforms entails, while remaining confident that all will—eventually—take a selfie. Resistance is futile.”

Photo: Tsetse Fly Mask in performance, courtesy Knoetze, Hlongwane and Wilson (2022-23)

Honorary Mention

Dzata: The Institute of Technological Consciousness

Russel Hlongwane – Substance Point (ZA), Francois Knoetze and Amy Louise Wilson – Lo-Def Film Factory (ZA)

“(…) Made with Dala AI, found footage and an assembly of costumed characters, Dzata: The Institute of Technological Consciousness aims to shift the image of “African data” in the technological imagination and decolonize ideas around technology and innovation.”

Honorary Mention

FuneralPlay

Ruini Shi (CN)

“(…) By using a digital platform to offer online “rituals of healing” through gameplay, Funeral Play by Ruini Shi uses technology to create tender, new social structures. This speculative artwork embodies an emerging narrative of future possibilities that inspire discussions about the applications and potential trajectories of technological development.”

Honorary Mention

GLITCHBODIES

Rebecca Merlic (HR)

“(…) Liberated from the confines of binary structures, hierarchical systems, and fixed notions of gender, GLITCHBODIES roots itself in concepts of gender fluidity where the body becomes a vehicle for new world building and collective consciousness.”

Photo: Yu-Han Chen, Ching-Wen Hsu, Ruei-Sin Jhang, Li-Hua Zhan, Tung-En Chien, Pei-Chi Wu

Honorary Mention

huě iànn

Yu-Han Chen (TW), Ching-Wen Hsu (TW), Ruei-Sin Jhang (TW), Li-Hua Zhan (TW), Tung-En Chien (TW), Pei-Chi Wu (TW)

“(…) It suggests that the perception and use of freedom of speech have changed over time and that nowadays, freedom of speech is often invoked as a protective measure. The faded blue aesthetics and the clever soundscape of this artwork evokes a feeling of poignant loss in what is essentially a subtle, political work.”

Honorary Mention

I Took a Lethal Dose of Herbs

Yvette Granata (US)

“(…) Set against the white picket bigotry of Post-Trump’s America, this critical fabulation highlights oppressive policies based on faith not fact. Dangerously experimenting on yourself because you are unable or unwilling to bear a child? Witches were burnt for less than this. This sad tale is as old as time.”

Honorary Mention

Inter net

Zi Yin Chen (TW), Hsiang Feng Chuang (TW)

“(…) The work shows the still unexplored aesthetic potential of our digital footprints. Rather than visualizing all the records together or extracting important patterns, the artists arrange printouts in an overlapping manner, similar to a shingle roof, which protects us in a house from the outside world.”

Honorary Mention

Le Mal des Ardents (Ardent Other)

Alice Brygo (FR)

“(…) Reversing the angle of perspective onto the faces of the crowd, Alice Byrgo constructs an uncanny digital landscape that draws attention to our fascination with catastrophic events. Highlighting the behavior of the crowd, the disconcerting immersive experience lays bare the social tensions bathed in the light of hidden flames.”

Honorary Mention

Lebensraum / Living Space

Sven Windszus (DE)

“(…) With this installation Sven Windszus aims to ask questions about causality and responsibility. Do we keep pumping or do we halt the process before the screen is underwater?”

Photo: multiplex. From exhibition “rhizomatiks_multiplex” (Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, 2021)

Honorary Mention

Rhizomatiks x ELEVENPLAY “multiplex”

MIKIKO (JP), Daito Manabe (JP), Motoi Ishibashi (JP), Satoshi Horii (JP), Yuya Hanai (JP), ELEVENPLAY (JP), Rhizomatiks (JP)

“(…) Happening in two physical spaces and as an online work, the piece is a true feat of multi-media content, in which the technicalities eventually leave space for the poetry of audio-visual enchantment: the suspension of disbelief. Sometimes words are neither useful nor necessary.”

Honorary Mention

PLSTC

Laen Sanches (FR)

“(…) Through the fusion of AI-generated images, digital compositing, and sophisticated editing, the film encourages empathy and action, sparking a connection with the plight of marine life. It also shows the true potential of AI cinema, which can inform, delight, and inspire audiences to take action”

Honorary Mention

Smog Season

Witaya Junma (TH)

“(…) the work not only illustrates the severity of the issue but also encourages viewers to consider their entitlement to clean air and the collective responsibility in resolving this crisis.”

Golden Nica

A Tale of Two Seeds: Sound and Silence in Latin America’s Andean Plains

Atractor Estudio (CO) + Semantica Productions (INT)

“(…) A Tale of Two Seeds uses data capture technologies, recordings and sonification to make a sound case study of Colombian agricultural soils (…) This work reflects the social engagement and activism that many artists, particularly those in countries with prevalent economic and social disparities, employ to force the business of agriculture to be more holistic and ecological in its practices.”

Photo: Installation Render, atractor + semántica

Photo: Camilo Martín, Alba Triana Studio

Award of Distinction

Harmonic Motion

Alba Triana (CO)

“(…) The piece departs from a premise: Nature is fundamentally active and interconnected. There is a vitality that inhabits everything, even in the inert. And that omnipresent vitality largely determines who we are, our interests, desires, issues, ideas, and everything that emerges from ourselves. (…) Hearing the unheard and seeing the unseen, visitors immerse themselves in a vibrational meditative environment that invites them to pause, become aware of their senses, and escape the cacophony of daily life.”

Award of Distinction

zwischenraum – interspace – acoustic cartography

Julia Jasmin Rommel (DE)

“zwischenraum – interspace – acoustic cartography is based on an artistic exploration of the acoustic measurement of space, dealing with the aspect of orientation, while reflecting on the phenomena of ubiquity and space. (…) The work represents a stunningly clear, minimalistic and beautiful realization of data sonification in an undeniably creative artistic way.”

Honorary Mention

30 Cycles of Flux

Richard Garet (US/UY)

“(…) The work addresses how imperceptible energy, which we encounter in daily life, goes unnoticed. It draws our attention to the fact that in this day and age, we need to be more in tune with our senses where we live. (…)”

Honorary Mention

زبانی که خاموش است / A TONGUE THAT IS TURNED OFF

Rogine Moradi (IR)

“(…) the work teaches us that linguistic comprehension is not required to understand the piece itself and empathy and solidarity is much more fathomable than we like to admit or than we can comprehend.”

Honorary Mention

A Natural History of Networks / Softmachine

Ralf Baecker (DE)

“The performance’s minimalist yet impressive approach relied on custom-built electrochemical apparatus to create highly organic, fluid movements in a black hue. (…) It shows beautifully the dynamic relationship between human creativity and the immutable laws of nature.”

Honorary Mention

Antenna

Floris Vanhoof (BE)

“Antenna is an impressive artwork that seamlessly combines different aspects of art and technology to raise the audience’s awareness of the frequencies that surround us. (…) makes it possible to create impressive sound compositions resulting from the frequencies of the environment.”

Credits: ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Photo: Chiara Bellamoli

Honorary Mention

Bias II

Artemi-Maria Gioti (GR)

“(…) The system learns new aspects with each new pianist and each new performance and will generate a slightly modified version of the interaction. Through this interaction the piano seems to generate surprisingly new but fitting timbres and gestures beside the lively interaction between player and computer.”

Honorary Mention

klimaton ARCTIC≈2020

Adnan Softić and Nina Softić (feat. Thies Mynther & MOSAiC Expedition Team) (INT)

“(…) The instrument not only creates haunting sonic images, but also allows for interactive engagement with the data through the keyboard, enabling artists and researchers alike to experience the sonic representation of the Arctic’s ever-changing environment.”

Honorary Mention

MELENCOLIA

Brigitta Muntendorf (AT/DE)

“(…) A hugely complex project, Melencolia demonstrates the potential of modern technologies in a traditional, specific environment, such as the opera, and proves that new artistic formats can thrive in these spaces.”

Honorary Mention

OSZILOT

Luc Gut (CH), Rolf Hellat (CH), OSZILOT (CH)

“(…) Combining analogue objects and digitizing their sound through gyro sensors, this sonic interpretation is at once extremely satisfying to the ear whilst reanimating our imaginations by giving new meaning to objects which, as “adults,” we might erroneously write off as mundane. (…)”

Honorary Mention

Rhizomes

Aho Ssan (FR)

“(…) Inspired by Deleuze’s and Guattari’s rhizomatic model, the piece grows and overflows in an interesting way, immersing listeners in a universe of organic mutations, blending languages, and evoking emotions.”

Honorary Mention

Syphon

Wojciech Rusin (PL)

“(…) With references to Eastern European mythologies and Carpathian influences, Syphon celebrates the global tapestry of musical traditions in a unique, forward-looking manner, offering a refreshing perspective in a predominantly Western-centric music landscape.”

Honorary Mention

Temporary Stored

Joseph Kamaru (KE)

“(…) Temporary Stored is nonetheless not a rehashing of European colonial violence—this piece rather uses sound as a conjuring of specters of oral and cultural histories of Central and Eastern Africa.”

Honorary Mention

TRAILS

Mariam Gviniashvili (GE/NO)

“(…) The acousmatic composition TRAILS leads the listener into a landscape with rather sparse dramatic elements that develop time and space into a cinematic experience, encoding sound material into narrative trails. (…)”

Golden Nica

Unerasable Characters Series

Winnie Soon (HK/UK)

“(…) a three-part investigation of the scale of digital authoritarianism through the transformation of censored content by some of the very technology used to control it. Artist Winnie Soon (HK) uses machine learning techniques combined with DIY and open source approaches to complicate notions of control and power. (…) By transforming scraped, censored content into “new” experiences that avoid or circumvent surveillance, Soon ultimately questions whether the very same technology that aims to remove information can be hijacked to make the erased unerasable.”

Image courtesy: Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, Photo: Andrew Curtis

Award of Distinction

3SDC project (Sunlight, Soil & Shit (De)Cycle)

Oron Catts (AU), Ionat Zurr (AU), Steve Berrick (AU)

“(…) As a weeks-long durational performative set-up involving a series of interconnected processes—controlled growth of plant and animal tissues, optimized environment agriculture, composting, and alkaline hydrolysis biocremation—Oron Catts, Ionat Zurr, and Steve Berrick point to the failure to acknowledge so-called ‘ecosystem services’ and biodiversity concerns in innovative and abstract agricultural ventures, often even in the name of sustainability. (…)”

Award of Distinction

Shadows from the Walls of Death

Adam Brown (US)

“Shadows from the Walls of Death is a complex and multi-layered intermedia and live art project that puts anthropocentric assertions to the test in an age of ubiquitous greenwashing. The project involves and combines chemical synthesis and field research into naturally detoxifying micro-organism and plants used in bio- and phytoremediation, and thus emphasizes eco-systemic intelligence to address trans-historical issues of inherent toxicity of human made media to represent ‘nature’ from an exclusive human-only point of view. (…)”

Honorary Mention

Biobot

Zoran Srdić Janežič (SI)

“(…) unique combination of the hardware, software, and wetware, where their interoperability intends to enable unexpected behavior and therefore emancipate the Biobot from human productivistic expectations.”

Honorary Mention

Codex Virtualis_Genesis

Interspecifics (MX)

“(…) The Codex, as a large-scale installation that gathers new lifeforms, asks us to consider the clear metaphorical parallels between life’s collaborative possibilities at bacterial levels, and art and AI’s collaborative potential.”

Honorary Mention

Ecologies of Care

Ani Liu (US)

“(…) The assemblage of Ecologies presents motherhood and childhood, within today’s driving frames of computational reading and interpretation and control of our bodies, families, and their futures.”

Honorary Mention

ERBSENZÄHLER Quality Sorter V2

Verena Friedrich (DE)

“(…) This automation reflects the growing trend of delegating complex decision-making to intelligent systems and Friedrich’s installation raises thought-provoking questions about this, and about the impact of mathematical-technical systems on our understanding of the world we live in.”

Honorary Mention

From Paradigm to Paradigm, into the Biomic Time

Nandita Kumar (IN)

“(…) In this work, media ecology binds with actual ecological issues, showing how vital policymaking on the environment is increasingly intertwined with the information that surrounds us.”

Honorary Mention

Interspecies Robot Sex

Miriam Simun (US)

“This video investigates the management of artificial life by robots eventually controlled by artificial intelligence. (…) The format of the video essay makes this documentary a compelling artwork reflecting on the meaning of artificial life.”

Honorary Mention

Masakhane – pioneering participatory approaches to building African language technologies, for Africans, by Africans

Masakhane (INT)

“(…) Through its combination of explicit community values and technical expertise, Masakhane emerges as a creative, generative movement of African technologists and linguists focused on representing local perspectives within the global context of AI.”

Honorary Mention

Monsters and Ghosts of the Far North

Lena Geerts Danau (BE), Andra Pop-Jurj (RO), alternaa (BE/UK)

“This artwork as a form of metaverse enables the exploration of the perplexities within the Arctic Circle. Storytelling combined with gamification can deliver scientific and socio-economical knowledge about a distant and inaccessible environment that is yet so central to our age. (…)”

Honorary Mention

Perhaps, art begins with the fireflies

Nelo Akamatsu (JP), Yuichi Oba (JP)

“Akamatsu and Oba beautifully fuse artistic practice, biotechnology research, and insect courtship in a moving exploration of the evolution of both creativity and animal and plant life existing 100 million years ago. (…)”

Honorary Mention

QT.bot – Sitting here with you in the future

Lucas LaRochelle (CA)

“(…) a narrative both rooted in and obfuscating the confessions and pronouncements of the global queer community that is both delightful and confusing, prompting us to consider how our machine learning tools can be queered to celebrate possibilities rather than limit them.”

Honorary Mention

SH4D0W – Who is the Master and Who the Shadow? A live performance with an improvising AI, as the protagonist.

Mikael Fock (DK)

“SH4D0W is an immersive 3D stage-performance that explores the captivating influence of humanized artificial intelligence. (…)”

Honorary Mention

SHIFT

Géraldine Honauer (CH)

“(…) SHIFT literally shifts the focus to shift work as capitalist strategy and work shifts that artists execute outside their actual practice to ‘work for their work,’ confusing the act and the product of labor. (…)”

Golden Nica – Young Professionals

Verblassende Stimmen

Sonja Höglinger, HBLA für künstlerische Gestaltung

“(…) its visual presence actually conveys everything succinctly. It speaks without speaking. Its tonality is tattooed into the fabric skin forever with needle and thread. The fabric itself already resembles the sound track of a composition that has not yet been played, or like the lines on a monitor when the heart no longer beats. (…) Verblassende Stimmen (Fading Voices) is an analog work that, despite everything, manages to capture the digital and intertwine the best of both worlds in a wonderful way.”

Photo: Sonja Höglinger

Award of Distinction
Young Professionals

Gan Eden

Anatol Grandits, Tomas Perkovic

“(…) It is a world from which humanity has eradicated itself and all other forms of life. The title alludes to the paradise from which we have expelled ourselves in favor of mass consumerism and materialism. The interactive experience of Gan Eden conveys a silent anger that holds up a mirror to the resigned attitude towards the climate catastrophe.”

Photo: Linda Michelitsch, Konstantin Redl, Emma Gruber

Award of Distinction
Young Professionals

Meditações

Linda Michelitsch, Konstantin Redl, Emma Gruber

“Young people on a class trip. The paradise outside is merely external and illusory. Inside, a struggle takes place. A struggle against appearances, shallowness, and hypocrisy. The possibilities and temptations of Western civilization no longer function as tranquilizers. The reactions are anger, disturbance, and rebellion. It is the struggle of coming of age and awakening that we witness here. (…)”

HONORARY MENTION
Young Professionals

#Pictrees – Eine Grazer Umweltinitiative

Felix Zorn-Pauli, Neo Klinger, Sarah Windisch, Bianca Amberger, Enzo Gutschi, Paul Miklautz, Tobias Fischbach

“For an entire month, the students occupied the media facade of the Kunsthaus Graz with the Insta-theme “Nature in the Urban Landscape.” The more stories were tagged, the more trees the city of Graz was allowed to plant. (…)”