“Digital Communities” Awards Ceremony in New York
Ars Electronica and SAP honored the winners of the Prix Ars Electronica’s new Digital Communities category at a gala reception in New York. 300 invited guests gathered at the Metropolitan Pavilion in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood, where representatives of “The World Starts With Me” and “Wikipedia” received their Golden Nica statuettes and four other projects were singled out for recognition with Awards of Distinction.
Linz/New York (June 25, 2004). The ceremonial presentation of Golden Nicas to the Digital Communities prizewinners made for quite an unusual constellation of attendees on Wednesday evening in New York. 300 invited guests—most of them CEOs and top executives of global corporations like Nestlé, Peugeot-Citroën, Bayer and Deutsche Bank as well as numerous representative of the United Nations staff and diplomatic corps—encountered the winners of the Digital Communities category—dynamic organizers of independent websites, Internet communities and development projects. SAP’s Les Hayman, Denise O’Brian representing the UN Global Compact, and author Howard Rheingold, one of the prime movers in the conception and implementation of the new category, shared master of ceremonies duties. Austrian State Secretary for the Arts and Media Franz Morak, who also had a chance to visit Ars Electronica’s anniversary exhibitions at Eyebeam and the American Museum of the Moving Image during his official visit to New York, was highly impressed by the social commitment being displayed by the partners in this collaborative undertaking.
SAP and Ars Electronica, who have a long history of cooperation on a wide variety of projects, jointly organized the evening’s proceedings. In the words of Ars Electronica Artistic Director Gerfried Stocker: “The help provided by
SAP is enabling this new Digital Communities category to find and foster innovative network projects all over the world. The projects that are being presented here this evening show how creativity and enthusiasm truly can turn technological infrastructure into tools working on behalf of mankind and for social progress.”
Les Hayman, SAP’s chief officer of global human resources and member
of the company’s Extended Board, also addressed the central role of the creative deployment of new technologies: “One of the greatest lasting benefits of the global expansion of the Internet is the ability to apply
digital innovation to promote large-scale social innovation. We are proud
to recognize initiatives and organizations that are creatively using new technologies to advance and improve relations among citizens, governments and the private sector.”
There are two grand-prizewinners. One Golden Nica went to “Wikipedia,” an online encyclopedia that is freely accessible and open to all Internet users. These users have had great success in self-administering the project and providing its content themselves. Danny Wool was visibly moved in accepting the Golden Nica statuette on behalf of “Wikipedia.” A second Golden Nica was awarded to “The World Starts With Me.” This Aids prevention project makes available a digital learning environment that is designed to provide enlightened content in a style that appeals to young people in an effort to reduce the rate of HIV infection. Alex Okwaput from Uganda and Emer Beamer Cronin from Dutch NGO “butterfly works” accepted the prize.
Awards of Distinction went to “www.krebskompass.de” represented by Nicole Oehlrich, dol2day/democracy online today” represented by Andreas Hauser, “Open Clothes” (Japan) represented by Masaki Arai, and “smart X tension” represented by Penny Yon from Zimbabwe and Peter Kuthan from Austria.
Each Golden Nica is accompanied by a cash prize of 10,000 euros and Award of Distinction winners receive 5,000 euros, whereby this prize money must be utilized in connection with the project—i.e. for the benefit of the prizewinning project itself or to launch new digital communities.
The evening’s entertainment program featured Philipp Glass’ “Les Enfants terribles” performed by Dennis Russell Davies and Maki Mamekawa (piano) within an environment of visual created by Martin Wattenberg. The organizers were especially pleased that Philipp Glass was able to appear in person at the gala ceremony.
This event kicked off the UN Global Compact Summit, a joint initiative of corporations active in the global economy, the United Nations, and representatives of international civil society with the declared goal of implementing principled corporate practices in the areas of human rights, labor conditions and environmental protection.
An international hookup on Thursday presented a discussion of digital communities among Gerfried Stocker and Howard Rheingold in the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York and experts and interested laymen in Vienna’s Radiokulturhaus. The event was broadcast live on Ö1. A summary is available online at science.orf.at.
For additional information, log on to:
www.aec.at/nyc
www.aec.at/press
www.unglobalcompact.org
science.orf.at
With inquiries, contact:
Wolfgang A. Bednarzek
Ars Electronica Center Linz
Hauptstraße 2, 4040 Linz, Austria
Tel.: ++43.732.7272-966
Fax.: ++43.732.7272-638
wolfgang.bednarzek@aec.at
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