The 2016 edition of Ars Electronica Awards has just been delivered. As it is the case every year, the European great event of arts, sciences and technologies will exhibit the laureates next September in Linz, Austria.
The very political nature of the awards in interactive arts and digital communities should also be noted. As a matter of fact, the Golden Nica in interactive arts was awarded this year to the strongly committed Christoph Wachter and Mathias Jud whom we talked about while they were at the Werkleitz and Transmediale festivals. The rewarded project, Can you hear me?, is mocking the surveillance of German institutions by the NSA, revealed by Edward Snowden. The two artists had placed a set of DIY antennas on the roof of the Swiss embassy in Berlin, offering the possibility for anyone to broadcast a multitude of messages, half-way between the interceptors of the embassies of Great-Britain (GCHQ) and the United-States (NSA).
Besides, the P2P Foundation receives the Golden Nica in the Digital Communities category for its actions as a whole in favor of an open society. The project Refugee Phrasebook receives an Award of Distinction for its action this year, providing vocabulary and useful information to refugees in Germany and elsewhere.
“Refugee Phrasebook”, international project, trailer:
Frank Kolkman and his DiY surgery robot, that we were telling you about not so long ago, also gets an Award of Distinction. Among the abundance of honorary distinctions, we will note the one awarded to Robertina Šebjanič for her project Aurelia 1+Hz : proto viva sonification co-produced by Décalab and the Cube, and presented this weekend in Orléans at the Fête01 (Makery was there).
2016 also rewards French animation with a Golden Nica for Boris Labbé’s film Rhizome and an Award of Distinction for David Coquard Dassault’s Peripheria. Congratulations to them.
Boris Labbé’s “Rhizome”, trailer:
David Coquard Dassault’s “Peripheria”, trailer: