RSS feed
JURY STATMENT
Alex Adriaansen (director v2 and DEAF, Rotterdam)
Carolyn Christov Bakargiev (chef curator Castello di Rivoli, Torino)
Joasia Krysa (curator / lecturer at the Faculty of Technology, University of Plymouth)
Vicente Matallana (director LaAgencia, Madrid)
Gefried Stocker (director of Ars Electronica, Linz)
In 2006 the Share Festival launched a world wide call for proposals for artists working in the field of digital art and culture. This is the third edition of the Festival and the first time the Share Festival included a prize competition.
From over 200 submitted works, an international jury shortlisted six works that were exhibited at the festival, from which one prize winner is selected. The entries came from all over the world and included diverse art forms addressing a wide range of artistic, social and cultural issues. Many of the entries were interdisciplinary in character, reflecting the diversity of creative approaches. Like with many other festivals, there is one prize only that is not tied to a specific technology or genre but rather to their combination and to the expression of ideas.
The quality of the entries were high and the majority were from young emerging artists. This confirms the need for platforms where artists can present and reflect on their work and that of their colleagues. In this way, the jury considers the prize to be a stimulus for new production and to create visibillity for digital art practice (still rather peripheral to the contemporary art world).
The theme of the Share Festival 2007 is Digital Affinity/Communities Now. Much consideration is given to processes and protocols that regulate communities through creative, reflexive, technological and innovative exchanges:
Communities then are not just new forms of aggregation, but a way of being and living, a collective and humanitarian project, a culture that links one billion and 80 million people today. The bonds between these people are not just geographical or family based, but inspired by cultural, ideological and political affinity. (Share 2007)
This critical concern is an important one when technologies appear to be more and more social in character sometimes referred to as social technologies or more commonly perhaps web 2.0 but questions remain as to the nature of these social interactions, the quality of participation and the seemingly ineviatble recuperation by big business (YouTube is the latest initiative to go this way). These issues of sociability, popularity and accessibility were noticable in many of the entries for the competition and in particular in the shortlisted works.
The jury was also particularly interested in works that do not focus on technology as a mere functional tool but as cultural expression and social critique. At the same time the jury was interested in the impact and interaction of the works with wider communities of interest and diverse audiences that go beyond just art. Shortlisted works rework existing platforms, hardware, software that are familiar to everyday users. The shortlisted works demonstrate emergent models, strategies and proposals to bring into our experience new political and economical relations and realities of contemporary technological culture. They reflect these issues both critically and playfully.
The project winner of Share Prize 2007 is:
Human Browser, Cristophe Bruno (Francia)
http://www.iterature.com/human-browser/en/
A human being embodies the World Wide Web, the sum of all the speeches of mankind. Human Browser is a series of Wi-Fi performances based on a Google Hack, where the usual technological interface is replaced with the oldest interface we know: the human being.
Thanks to its headset, an actor hears a text-to-speech audio that comes directely from the Internet in real-time. The actor repeats the text as he hears it. The textual flow is actually fetched by a programme that hijacks Google, diverting it from its utilitarian functions. Depending on the context in which the actor is, keywords are sent to the programme and used as search strings in Google so that the content of the textual flow is always related to the context.
Honorary mention:
Amazon-noir.com, UBERMORGEN.COM, Paolo Cirio, Alessandro Ludovico
(AT, USA, IT)
http://www.amazon-noir.com
The Bad Guys (The Amazon Noir Crew: Cirio, Lizvlx, Ludovico, Bernhard) steal copyrighted books from Amazon.com - by using sophisticated robot-perversion-technology coded by supervillain Paolo Cirio. A massive media fight and a brutal legal fight escalates into an online Showdown with the heist at the center of the story. Lizvlx from UBERMORGEN.COM has daily shoot outs with the global massmedia, Ludovico and Bernhard hardly resist kickback-bribes from powerful Amazon.com and Cirio violently pushes the boundary of copyright. Betrayal, blasphemy and pessimism splits the gang of bad guys. In the end the good guys (Amazon.com) win and drive off with the beautiful and seductive femme fatale (the massmedia).
Stanza (UK)
Sensity is made from real time data that is collected across the city in real time and visualized as a dynamic public installation which is also viewable online. Sensity visualizes the patterns we make, the forces we weave, which are all being networked into retrievable data structures that can be re-imagined as artworks. These patterns all disclose new ways of seeing the world.
The artist is attempting to move on towards a point where the landscape is a hybridized audio visual representation of the space. That is an audio visual experience based on the sounds and sights of the city pollutions, noise, traffic data , that are captured via sensor network. In other words sensors are used to environmentally monitor the city and the data output is used to create a public domain artwork describing the city data space.
How we understand and value information is of great importance. It seems reasonable to suggest that visual metaphors might simplify our understanding of data in space.
Gregory Shakar (USA)
The Analog Color Field Computer (ACFC)
The Analog Color Field Computer is an interactive video and sound installation. It’s sculptural computers produce surging pulses of colours and tones, conveying a symphony of sonic texture and luminescent patterns into the sparsely lit exhibition space. Each ACFC provides controls for users to adjust its hues, pitches and rhythms.
Moodvector from Gregory Shakar is a beautiful landscape of computers and screens displaying basic colours and sounds. The work points to the earlier artworks researching the relationship between sound and color (Skriabin). It involves public on the level of manipulation of both sound and color in this installation. Simple, beautiful, elegant, easy.
5VOLTCORE (Emanuel Andel - Christian Guetzer) (AT)
Shockbot Corejulio creates aesthetic information out of disfunction in the form of audio and visual output.
Shockbot Corejulio is built out of three main parts: 1st the programme that controls the shockbot, 2nd the controlling circuit board, that operates, via relays, the (3rd) motors that then move the shockbot.
Essential for the piece is the circular process between the computer and the shockbot. The computer sends impulses to the robot that subsequently moves on it’s tracks targeting random points within the computer hardware.
Mikro Orchestra Project (Jaroslaw Kujda (aka mikrokilla ) leader, Pawel Janicki - vj, produttore, Mariusz Jura, Agnieszka Kujda, Malgorzata Kujda, Tomasz,Prockow - vj, programmatore)
The Mikro Orchestra Project is experimental and audiovisual, based on using the Game Boy command section as a musical instrument. The project designer’s main goal was to produce new space for sound based on tones from the Game Boy command section.
The group has been together since 2001 and currently has six performers.This hi-tech sextet - who can’t even read the simplest scores - wanted to celebrate being together with the project that they call Mikro Orchestra Project. Top marks go to the Nintendo Game Boy, transformed for the occasion into a very original musical instrument.What is amazing about Mikro Orchestra is that they really seem to be live performances.
