Complexities of Being – Layered Truths
Every year since 1987, the Prix Ars Electronica has spotlighted media artworks from all over the world and served as a trend barometer offering inspiring, current and forward-looking insights into the interface between art, technology and society. The exhibition, which showcases the works of the Prix Ars Electronica winners, is undoubtedly one of the highlights of the Ars Electronica Festival and will take place at POSTCITY, the festival’s main venue.
The three categories for 2023 are New Animation Art, Digital Musics & Sound Art, and Artificial Intelligence & Life Art, with 3,176 entries from 98 countries. 46 works were selected from among them as award-winning works, and 19 of them are exhibited here.
This year, the jury’s focus was on complex, multi-layered and carefully crafted narratives that express the “real” of geopolitical, sociopolitical, cultural, gender, and diversity, and that hold inconvenient truths simultaneously in all three categories.
- For the Artificial Intelligence & Life Art category, an artistic critical attitude reminding us how the concepts of intelligence and life are subjected to human bias, was highly appreciated. It is a reminder and warning that we should be aware that there is no such thing as ”neutral and objective” intelligence, the jury mentioned.
- The New Animation Art category, which was renewed this year, was recognized for expanding the horizons of art by incorporating the dynamic and transformative qualities unique to this medium, and for exploring innovative storytelling techniques and art forms.
- In the Digital Musics & Sound Art category, works that “resonate with humanity” were highly evaluated for their deep humanity, interpretation of the world and history, the senses and the body, digital and musical instruments, and ancestral wisdom that hints at social issues.
To bring the name of Prix Ars Electronica to the forefront, the long-standing and familiar name of “CyberArts Exhibition” has been changed to “Prix Ars Electronica Exhibition” this year. In these turbulent times, the power of art to provide new perspectives and show forward-looking insights as a mirror of technology and society is becoming increasingly important. The Prix Ars Electronica is a guiding light for the future through art with the latest award-winning works being added to its archive every year as it continues to evolve.
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“زبانی که خاموش است / A TONGUE THAT IS TURNED OFF”
Rogine Moradi (IR)
A TONGUE THAT IS TURNED OFF, زبانی که خاموش است in Farsi, is an installation consisting of sculptural wall pieces and sound.
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3SDC project (Sunlight, Soil & Shit (De)Cycle)
Oron Catts (AU), Ionat Zurr (AU), Steve Berrick (AU)
Sunlight, Soil & Shit (De)Cycle-3SDC project is a durational performative experiment dealing with contestable food system futures.
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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: Sound and Silence in Latin America’s Andean Plains is a sound installation that explores the expansion of the current technical agro-industrial colonization in Latin America.
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Delivery Dancer’s Sphere
Ayoung Kim (KR)
Ernst Mo (an anagram of ‘Monster’) is a female delivery rider who works for a platform called Delivery Dancer in the fictitious Seoul. In this fiction, Seoul is a labyrinth of endlessly regenerating routes, and the Dancers (workers of Delivery Dancer) pursue never-ending delivery work under the control of a master algorithm called Dancemaster.
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ERBSENZÄHLER Quality Sorter V2
Verena Friedrich (DE)
“The good ones go into the pot, the bad ones go into your crop.” That’s how the story goes in Cinderella. But who actually decides what’s good and bad?
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From Paradigm to Paradigm, into the Biomic Time
Nandita Kumar (IN)
Nandita Kumar’s installation is playfully reminiscent of a newspaper-press, stuck in an eternal loop. The work comments on the constant regurgitation of misinformed and manipulative facts in relation to various environmental issues.
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Harmonic Motion
Alba Triana (CO)
This musical composition and immersive installation explores the vibrational and interconnected essence of the universe.
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Interspecies Robot Sex
Miriam Simun (US)
How will humans (and their robots) continue the reproduction of fruits after the bees are gone? An investigation into two responses to colony collapse disorder—a compendium of forces that threaten the extinction of honey bees, a ”companion species” upon whom the global agricultural system depends.
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IT’S DANGEROUS TO GO ALONE! TAKE THIS
Bassam Issa (IE)
IT’S DANGEROUS TO GO ALONE! TAKE THIS, a 30-minute-long CGI film, is the second part of an imaginary video game, which follows an ambiguous “hero” undergoing numerous metamorphoses.
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klimaton ARCTIC≈2020
Adnan Softić and Nina Softić (feat. Thies Mynther & MOSAiC Expedition Team) (INT)
klimaton ARCTIC≈2020 addresses the problem of communicability of scientific facts in the context of climate change in the form of a generative sound object.
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Lebensraum / Living Space
Sven Windszus (DE)
With Lebensraum, Sven Windszus wants to invite each participant to use their own muscle power to control the growth of our species. He has reduced the real conditions we are facing to a form of physical experiment.
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Oneroom-Babel
SANGHEE (Sanghee Lee) (KR)
Oneroom-Babel is the title of a structure placed in the deep sea. The Korean term “Oneroom” refers to an apartment in which the bedroom, kitchen, and living room are not separated but integrated into one space.
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OSZILOT
Luc Gut (CH), Rolf Hellat (CH), OSZILOT (CH)
OSZILOT is a hybrid of sound installation and performance. Everyday objects suspended from strings are transformed into oscillating sound objects via movement sensors.
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QT.bot – Sitting here with you in the future
Lucas LaRochelle (CA)
QT.bot is an artificial intelligence—trained on the dataset of the community mapping platform Queering The Map (www.queeringthemap.com)—that generates speculative queer and trans narratives and images of the environments in which they might unfold.
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Shadows from the Walls of Death
Adam Brown (US)
Shadows from the Walls of Death is a long-term artwork that investigates the historical, chemical, and material agency of Paris Green, one of the most toxic pigments ever produced.
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SHIFT
Géraldine Honauer (CH)
SHIFT is a process-oriented artwork that examines the economics of labor, bridging the gap between the real world and the increasingly commodified virtual world.
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Temporary Stored
Joseph Kamaru (KE)
Temporary Stored is a repatriation project which questions the significance of sound archives in museums.
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Unerasable Characters Series
Winnie Soon (HK/UK)
This body of work addresses the chilling scale and effect of state-enacted censorship, enforced through digital infrastructures.
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zwischenraum – interspace – acoustic cartography
Julia Jasmin Rommel (DE)
This project is based on an artistic exploration of the acoustic measurement of space.