Das sind die Preisträger*innen des S+T+ARTS Prize – Grand prize of the European Commission honoring Innovation in Technology, Industry and Society stimulated by the Arts.
Grand Prizes 2025
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AI War Cloud Database
Sarah Ciston (US)
What responsibilities do users and makers have in choosing AI tools, when their development can also lead to deadly outcomes at massive scales? AI War Cloud Database catalogues the systems used to make automated decisions in warfare, and it maps where the same types of tools appear in smartphones and popular social platforms.
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Sensing Quantum
LAS Art Foundation (DE)
LAS Art Foundationʼs Sensing Quantum is a long-term artistic research initiative that explores the intersections of quantum science, technology, philosophy, and contemporary art.
Honorary Mentions 2025
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Brain Processing Unit – The Future Where Biology and Computer Integrate
SoftBank, Daito Manabe, The University of Tokyo – Special Exhibition (JP)
Focusing on the distinctive abilities of the human brain, such as adaptability to unfamiliar environments and remarkable learning efficiency, the SoftBank Research Institute of Advanced Technology has been collaborating with artist Daito Manabe and the Ikeuchi Laboratory at the University of Tokyo on a project since 2022.
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Breathing Architecture
Filippo Nassetti (IT/GB)
Breathing Architecture explores the anatomy of air, modelling its flows within the intricate and beautiful structures of human respiration. The project merges art and science to advance the study of human anatomy, connecting artist Filippo Nassetti with researchers at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center through the S+T+ARTS AIR Residencies program.
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Coexist
Emergence Delft (NL)
Coexist is the outcome of artistic research on quantum technology by Emergence Delft. By translating key principles like superposition and the measurement problem into a life-size, multidimensional installation, Coexist offers visitors an experience of quantum phenomena.
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Computational Compost
Marina Otero Verzier (ES)
Computational Compost addresses the environmental impact of data storage and proposes a synergy between technology and ecology.
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Coral Sonic Resilience
Marco Barotti (IT)
Coral reefs are vibrant underwater ecosystems essential for maintaining marine biodiversity and protecting coastlines. Thriving with life, they create a unique underwater symphony that resonates with the crackle of shrimp, the chatter of fish, and other marine sounds.
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Data Against Feminicide: AI tools, transnational community, and data activism
Isadora Cruxên (GB), Catherine D’Ignazio (US), Silvana Fumega (AR), Helena Suárez Val (UY)
Data Against Feminicide is a feminist participatory action research and technology design project. We collaborate with data activists, artists, nonprofits, communities, governments, and journalists who monitor feminicide (or femicide in some contexts).
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Kataula
Ana Mikadze (GE)
Heidelberg Materials (previously Heidelberg Cement) is a German multinational building materials company. Operating across 50 countries, Heidelberg is a world’s second largest cement producer, and third largest for ready mixed concrete.
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Seeing Echoes in the Mind of a Whale
Marshmallow Laser Feast (GB)
Seeing Echoes in the Mind of a Whale is a large-scale audiovisual installation immersing viewers in the sensory world of cetaceans, celebrating the rich biodiversity of our oceans.
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Synthetic Memories
Domestic Data Streamers (ES)
Synthetic Memories is a heritage preservation initiative using generative AI to reconstruct and safeguard personal memories at risk of being lost or never visually documented.
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The Nebelivka Hypothesis
Forensic Architecture (UK), David Wengrow (UK)
Below Ukraine’s rich, black soils lie ancient settlements, rivals in scale to the first Mesopotamian cities, yet conceived on radically different principles. Their archaeological remains trouble our understandings of urban space, power, and ecology.
Nominations 2025
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AI in the Sky
Laura Cinti (IT)
At the heart of this project is a plant so rare that it stands on the brink of extinction. This plant, the Encephalartos woodii (E. woodii), a cycad classified as ‘extinct in the wild,’ is known from a single pollen-producing specimen found in South Africa’s oNgoye Forest in the late 19th century.
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ASTRES: Mapping the Firmament
Playmodes Studio (ES)
ASTRES is an audiovisual installation using laser light and sound to celebrate the night sky. The project employs algorithmic systems to address constantly changing star positions, with precise laser calibration techniques developed through university collaboration.
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Echorroes: Reflections on Tchaikovsky
Echorroes (GR)
Echorroes: Reflections on Tchaikovsky is a human-centered approach to Artificial Intelligence through interactive play with classical music, for children ages 1-3. Created by the interdisciplinary team Echorroes and commissioned by the Greek National Opera, the project establishes a playful dialogue between AI and Tchaikovsky, enabling children to co-create and transform his compositions.
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Emerald Black Latency
Mario Santamaría (ES)
Emerald Black Latency takes the Medusa Submarine Cable System as a starting point to explore the representation and material dimension of data circulation on the internet. Planned for 2026, Medusa is an 8,700 km fiber optic cable designed to enhance connectivity in the Mediterranean and link Europe with North Africa.
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HYBRIS
Yana Zschiedrich (DE)
HYBRIS is an art-based research initiative presenting an innovative method for transforming waste into both art and building materials. Since 2019, Yana Zschiedrich has explored this concept through a collaboration with mealworms, which decompose polystyrene into biodegradable substances. These can replace sand in new, sustainable construction applications.
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Large Language Writer
Lucy Li (AT), Leo Mühlfeld (AT), Alan Schiegl (AT)
How will we write in the future, and why should we design “seamful” interactions? The Large Language Writer (LLW) is an experimental design project that explores honest interactions with Large Language Models (LLMs).
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Light, Touch, Root (Hybrid)
Vanessa Amoah Opoku (DE)
During a research residency with Künstlerische Tatsachen at the University of Ulm’s TRR234 CataLight, I explored molecular light-driven catalysis in soft matter systems. Using near-infrared LiDAR, I scanned so-called “invasive” plants, creating point clouds that reimagine their presence in a sci-fi-inspired world with two suns.
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Lucid Life | Marama Ora
Christopher Bellamy (GB)
Inspired by the symbiotic relationship between corals and microorganisms, Christopher Bellamy has developed a contemporary living material that encapsulates bioluminescent microalgae. This living material glows in response to touch and requires only sunlight to survive, with a lifespan of at least six months.
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Museo Ocasional de un Paisaje Increíble
Ana Vogelfang (AR), Julieta García Vázquez (AR)
The Occasional Museum of an Incredible Landscape (MOPI) is a nomadic, ephemeral museum rethinking our relationship with landscapes, ecosystems, and collective memory. Created by Argentine artists Julieta García Vázquez and Ana Vogelfang, MOPI merges participatory art, environmental research, and territorial practices.
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Neutone Morpho — Real-time AI Audio Plugin and Platform
Neutone (INT)
Neutone Morpho is a real-time tone morphing plugin for Digital Audio Workstations (DAW) powered by advanced machine learning technology. It resynthesizes input sounds into entirely different styles while preserving the original sound’s shape.
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Performative Ethnographies
Špela Petrič (SI)
Performative Ethnographies (PE) are an artistic methodology and ongoing non-disciplinary research created as a response to the multiple layers of exclusion of laypeople from spaces where advanced technology is developed, even though their bodies are affected by it.
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SUN[Flower] Plasma
Victoria Vesna (US), Haley Marks (US), Walter Gekelman (US) Kevin Ramsey (US)
[SUN] Flower Plasma explores the ecological and geopolitical meanings of sunflowers alongside the science of Alfvén waves moving through the sun’s corona and interstellar space. The installation features a two-channel video of the Large Plasma Device, sunflower fields, bees, and microscopic sunflower cells that resemble the sun’s surface.
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Surpassing Limits of Virtuosity of Pianists by Exoskeleton
Shinichi Furuya (JP)
We tested whether passively experiencing motions that have been not experienced could surmount the ceiling effect and enhance the already well-honed skills of experts. We utilized a novel exoskeleton robot attachable to fingers.
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The Call
Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst (US)
The Call develops new protocols and materials for the creation of AI models. To train the AI, Herndon and Dryhurst have composed a songbook of hymns, singing exercises and a recording protocol, and recorded fifteen community choirs across the UK.
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The Permanent and Insatiable
Xin Liu (CN)
The Permanent and Insatiable is a series of installations exploring the mythic tension in material science. Each installation features miniature cityscapes made from post-consumer PET plastic, submerged in transparent bioreactors where lab-grown enzymes gradually dissolve them.
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The Solar Share – An Edible Solar Currency
DISNOVATION.ORG art collective (INT)
The Solar Share stages a form of planetary economics based on photosynthesis. This artistic provocation seeks to estimate the orders of magnitude of new solar energy income metabolized by photosynthetic organisms at a planetary scale, a process fundamental to all planetary life.
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The Year of Weather
Open-weather (INT)
Open-weather’s Year of Weather (YoW) explores changing relations to weather and climate as the planet warms above 1.5 degrees Celsius. It unfolds as public access to environmental knowledge is threatened by attempts to dismantle US agencies such as National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), an institution that has provided satellite images to ground stations around…
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Zifzafa
Lawrence Abu Hamdan (LB)
Zifzafa demonstrates the force of this sonic annexation, and features over 40 field recordings by Jawlani artists, to serve as an archive of a sonic life under threat.