The Winners of Prix Ars Electronica 2002

Five juries of international experts met from April 19 to 21 at the ORF Upper Austrian Regional Studio in Linz to judge the best works in the cyberarts competition Prix Ars Electronica 2002. Here are the winners of the Golden Nicas 2002 and the Awards of Distinctions.

1.373 artists from 80 countries entered 2.356 works this year in the 16th edition of the most important cyberarts competition with the longest tradition worldwide. The overall results from all six competition categories provide a representative overview of the state of creativity in the field of digital media.

18 money prizes amounting to a total of Euro 109.900 will be awarded at the Awards Presentation on September 9, 2002 at the ORF Upper Austrian Regional Studio. The prizes of the Prix Ars Electronica 2002 go to the USA, Japan, France, Sweden, Great Britain, Australia, Canada, India and Austria.



Computer Animation / Visual Effects

Golden Nica
Pete Docter, Pixar (USA): 'Monsters Inc.'
'Monsters Inc.', Pixar Studio's most recent feature film, is a milestone in the field of 3D computer animation. The film demonstrates not only the highest quality in storytelling and animation, but is also impressive in all the technical details, such a modeling, light, surfaces and rendering.
Pete Docter, CalArts graduate and director of 'Monsters Inc.' is one of Pixar's veterans. He worked together with John Lasseter on 'Toy Story' and now presents his first independent work with 'Monsters Inc.'

Awards of Distinction
Peter McDonald (AUS): 'Harvey'
Peter McDonald's 9-minute film 'Harvey' tells a story of loneliness and obsessions. While using references to Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece 'Psycho', he not only conveys this story with the means and possibilities of our times, he also transposes it into the social reality of our day.
Peter McDonald holds an Honorary Master of Arts from the Australian Film, Television & Radio School. His films have been shown at various film festivals.

BUF (F): 'Panic Room'
With Panic Room, the French 3D production studio BUF radically expands the path started with 'Fight Club'. The completely digital storyboard allows the director to create previously non-existent image worlds - the camera becomes the eye of the director in the broadest sense. In this perspective, 'Panic Room' thus represents a milestone in the further development of contemporary film.
BUF was founded in 1984 as a 3D studio (software development and production) and has since then contributed essentially to the development of contemporary film production.


Digital Musics

Golden Nica
Yasunao Tone (USA): 'Man'Yo Wounded 2001'
Yasunao Tone was one of the first Japanese artists active in composing 'events' and improvisational music. A founding member of the Fluxus Movement with Takehisa Kosugi, Yoko Ono and George Maciunas, Yasunao Tone has been doing experimental sound pieces since the early 1960's. For the past ten years much of his work has centered on extending the possibilities of CDs as a performance medium.

Awards of Distinction
Alejandra Salinas / Aeron Bergman; Lucky Kitchen (Spain/USA): 'Revisionland'/'The Tale of Pip'
'Lucky Kitchen' combines grass-roots digital synthesis with lo-fi tapeworks and field recordings that mine Europe's rich vein of folklore, mythology and cultural and social tradition.

Curtis Roads (USA): 'Point, Line, Cloud'
Curtis Roads' award-winning project Point, Line, Cloud features granular and pulsar synthesis, methods he developed for generating sound from acoustical particles. It is an outstanding example of the most current computer music, a great listening experience, based on academic research and technologies, with a huge impulse on various scenes and environments beyond all boundaries.


Interactive Art

Golden Nica
David Rokeby (Canada): 'n-cha(n)t'
'n-cha(n)t' is an interactive computer installation in which seven computers perform voice recognition, free-association and language generation. Tightly focussed microphones listen to words and phrases spoken by people in the immediate vicinity. The computers are linked by a network through which they stimulate each other. The computers speak their stream of association through speakers. The ears on the monitors indicate each computer's state of receptivity. All of the text in the installation is improvised by the computers using extensive knowledge bases and rules of grammar.

Awards of Distinction
Ranjit Makkuni (India), The Crossing Project: 'The Crossing: Living, Dying and Transformation in Banaras'
'The Crossing: Living, Dying and Transformation in Banaras' multimedia installation shows Banaras, a microcosm of Indian culture, and is a multimedia-based cultural learning tool. The exhibit consists of a collection of installations and interfaces. It makes the traditional form of the computer (display, mouse, keyboard) disappear and substitutes them by meaningful objects of cultural value. Information can be accessed through an e-Rickshaw, e-jackets, hi-touch interfaces integrating traditional arts and crafts.

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer (MEX/CDN): 'Body Movies - Relational Architecture No. 6'
'Body Movies - Relational Architecture No. 6' is an installation demanding public access for the interaction. Portraits are projected on a building wall but can only appear inside the projected shadows of local passers-by. A camera-based tracking system monitors the location of the shadows on real time, and when the shadows match all the portraits in a given scene, the control computer issues an automatic command to change the scene to the next set of portraits.


Net Vision / Net Excellence

Golden Nica / Net Vision
RSG (USA): 'Carnivore'
http://rhizome.org/carnivore/
Based on the FBI's software for monitoring network traffic, the Carnivore project enables designers and artists to create their own visualizations of data flow on a network. The Carnivore software is available to anyone who wants to experiment with it. Using Flash for the visual design can produce some of the most dynamic and beautiful designs based on real-world, real-time human interaction with computer technology.

Golden Nica / Net Excellence
Josh On, Futurefarmers (USA): 'They Rule'
http://www.theyrule.net
Database visualization is an important area of interactive design. 'They Rule' is an excellent example of this kind of project. It attempts to demonstrate the relationships between some of America's most powerful corporate executives by visually showing you which companies they are involved with, and how these companies might gain from such a relationship.

Awards of Distinction / Net Vision
It's Alive! (S): 'BotFighters'
http://www.botfighters.com/demo/index.jsp
Gaming is recognized as being a serious area of development for the future of mobile technology and wireless internet. Botfighters uses existing technology to bring people in a localized area together to play against each other using their mobile phone handsets. It is a definitive step in the right direction for mobile gaming and has spread to other countries already including the Finland and Sweden.

Maia Gusberti, Michael Aschauer, Nik Thoenen, Sepp Deinhofer (A):
'./logicaland'
http://www.logicaland.net
'./logicaland' invites you to partake in the development of the World's nations by voting on how and what the country in question should spend it's money on. As an individual you cannot hope to have much of an impact, but by grouping together you may see the direction of a country begin to shift. An excellent method of invoking discussion and debate, as well as a good primer for political discussion in the classroom.

Awards of Distinction / Net Excellence
Schoenerwissen (D): 'Minitasking'
http://www.minitasking.com
Gnutella is the famous peer-to-peer file sharing protocol. 'Minitasking' attempts to visually show the relationships of the computers on that network. And does it very well. It is beautiful to look at and will bring out the most voyeuristic tendencies in the viewer as they watch the various search strings appear on their screens. A strangely engaging use of common internet technology.

Alexandra Jugovic, Florian Schmitt; Hi-Res! (UK): 'Donnie Darko'
http://www.donniedarko.com
The website for 'Donnie Darko' is a supreme example of engaging audiences across multiple media where the online component actually enhances the viewers experience of the original element, the film.


cybergeneration - u19 freestyle computing

Golden Nica
Karola Hummer (Innsbruck): 'TI-92'
The project 'TI-92' uses mathematical functions from analytical geometry to draw on the TI-92 calculator (without a cursor). Karola Hummer: 'The abstraction is preconditioned by the technology (a screen with about 5000 dots), and I strive for maximum reality with my modest means. If art links idea and technology, then my pictures are at least a modest artistic expression.'

Awards of Distinction
Philipp Luftensteiner (Aschach): 'Arena'
After intensively studying manuals and tutorials, Philipp Luftensteiner developed 'Arena' in conjunction with a graduation project. This is a complete 3D animated short film, which is about two robots that were created to kill one another, but then begin to love each other.

Gruppe 'sofa23' (Milo Tesselaar, Markus Murschitz, Ulrich Reiterer, Jona Hoier, Mathias Scherz and Stefan Bergmann, Graz): 'minials'
'minials' is a Flash animation combining video with audio. There are 12 buttons, which are each assigned a sound level and an image level. The aim is to allow the visitor to individually partly arrange the track and the video, and to have fun trying things out with the media of sound and film.

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17 comment(s)
I should win the Hononary Mention award this year! (TURE SJOLANDER / 2002/5/19 9:32:20 PM)
He steal my Maodonald creation! (TURE SJOLANDER / 2002/5/19 9:28:14 PM)
I am The Winners of Prix Ars Electronica 2002 (TURE SJOLANDER / 2002/5/18 2:40:51 AM)
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