2020 Winners

Photo: Ars Electronica / Robert Bauernhansl

These are the winners of the S+T+ARTS Prize – Grand prize of the European Commission honoring Innovation in Technology, Industry and Society stimulated by the Arts:

Grand Prizes 2020

  • EDEN – Ethics – Durability – Ecology – Nature

    EDEN – Ethics – Durability – Ecology – Nature

    Olga Kisseleva

    Bio-art: When a Tree became a Partner Grand Prize – Innovative Collaboration: Awarded for innovative collaboration between industry or technology and the arts that opens new pathways for innovation. It was the rebirth of the Biscarosse Elm in the frame of Olga Kisseleva’s Biopresence project (2012) that served as a catalyst for the creation of…

  • Design by Decay, Decay by Design

    Design by Decay, Decay by Design

    Andrea Ling

    Grand Prize – Artistic Exploration: Awarded for artistic exploration and art works where appropriation by the arts has a strong potential to influence or alter the use, deployment or perception of technology. Design by Decay, Decay by Design is a series of artifacts that exhibit designed decay. They were done for the 2019 Ginkgo Bioworks…

Honorary Mentions 2020

  • c o m p u t e r 1. 0

    c o m p u t e r 1. 0

    Julian Goldman, Victoria Manganiello, SOFT MONITOR

    Full or empty; color or clear; zero or one; under or over – c o m p u t e r 1.0 imagines a display for the future, by looking at displays from our past.

  • Perception iO

    Perception iO

    Karen Palmer

    Perception iO (Input Output) is the future of Law Enforcement. An Artificial Intelligence data set emotionally responsive to the participant and potentially their bias.

  • Precious Plastic Universe

    Precious Plastic Universe

    Dave Hakkens

    The Precious Plastic Universe aims to boost plastic recycling globally by making it more understandable and accessible for everyone.

  • Proposals of Collaboration with the Viral Entities / Tame is to Tame, Virophilia

    Proposals of Collaboration with the Viral Entities / Tame is to Tame, Virophilia

    Pei-Ying Lin

    Proposals of Collaboration with the Viral Entities is a series of endeavours towards finding a balance between our anthropocentric position and our unavoidable encounter of the viral others.

  • Prosthetic Memory

    Prosthetic Memory

    M Eifler

    Prosthetic Memory is an ongoing experiment in self-augmentation combining handmade journals, daily videos, and a custom AI.

  • Sociality

    Sociality

    Paolo Cirio

    In Sociality, Cirio collected and rated Internet inventions submitted to the U.S. patent office. Subsequently, he invited the public to share, flag, and ban the technologies designed to monitor and manipulate social behaviors.

  • SOMEONE

    SOMEONE

    Lauren Lee McCarthy

    SOMEONE is a meditation on the smart home, the tensions between intimacy vs privacy, convenience vs agency, and the role of human labor in the future of automation.

  • Spoiled Spores

    Spoiled Spores

    Avril Corroon

    Responding to the housing crisis in Ireland and London, Spoiled Spores is an installation of up to 25 toxic cheeses made with a culture of toxic black mold sampled from rental accommodation in Dublin and London.

  • The Wrong

    The Wrong

    David Quiles Guilló

    The Wrong was born in 2013 as a collaborative effort to create and promote digital art & culture, launching a global art biennale open to participation, happening both online & offline.

  • TransVision

    TransVision

    Jiabao Li

    Through three perceptual machines, TransVision questions the habitual ways in which we interpret and understand the visual world intervened by digital media, and how technology mediates the way we perceive reality.

Nominations 2020

  • aqua_forensic

    aqua_forensic

    Robertina Šebjanič, Gjino Šutić

    aqua_forensic illuminates the invisible anthropogenic pharmaceutical pollutants—residues of human consumption. The project combines art/science/citizen science in a “hunt for a monster” and opens the discussion about our solidarity and empathy with waters beyond human perception.

  • Be Water by Hong Kongers

    Be Water by Hong Kongers

    Hong Kong protesters

    Since the summer of 2019, a tremendous political movement has been happening in Hong Kong. Digital technology plays a key role in the whole movement.

  • BETAlight

    BETAlight

    Barbro Scholz

    BETAlight is a flexible light source that can be worn on the body and allows the user to adjust its shape, orientation, brightness, and light temperature according to his or her needs.

  • CMD: Experiment in Bio Algorithmic Politics

    CMD: Experiment in Bio Algorithmic Politics

    Michael Sedbon

    In this installation, two artificial ecosystems are sharing a light source. The photosynthetic cells and the computer are experimenting with different political systems granting access to this resource, allowing the system to oscillate between collaboration and competition.

  • Code of Conscience

    Code of Conscience

    Code of Conscience

    The Code of Conscience is open source software that restricts the use of heavy-duty vehicles in protected land areas.

  • Compression Cradle

    Compression Cradle

    Lucy McRae

    Compression Cradle envisages a future world where mechanical touch is an antidote for today’s ‘forever connectedness.’

  • CONTAIN / Open Cell – Mobile COVID19 Emergency Testing Facilities

    CONTAIN / Open Cell – Mobile COVID19 Emergency Testing Facilities

    Open Cell

    CONTAIN a decentralized and open-source approach for testing COVID19.

  • Hale: An Upgrade on Patient Attire

    Hale: An Upgrade on Patient Attire

    Mariam Ibrahim

    Hale: An Upgrade on Patient Attire aims to create a conversation around the potential development of the hospital gown and to predict, using simple solutions, what could potentially become the future of the patient gown.

  • Hybrid Living Materials

    Hybrid Living Materials

    The Mediated Matter Group

    Hybrid Living Materials (HLMs) point to an exciting future for designers at the intersection of biology and technology—the grown and the made—to deliver products that are customized to a particular shape, as well as a specific material, chemical, and even genetic make-up.

  • INNER VALUES

    INNER VALUES

    Tobias Trübenbacher

    INNER VALUES deals with the value of alleged waste products in animal processing.

  • Re:flex

    Re:flex

    Pierre Azalbert, Benton Ching, Karlijn Sibbel

    Re:flex is the result of experiment-driven, multidisciplinary research around materials that can respond to physical stimuli. It draws inspiration from natural organisms which can adapt to changes in their environment by adjusting themselves naturally to new circumstances.

  • Re3 Glass

    Re3 Glass

    Faidra Oikonomopoulou & Telesilla Bristogianni

    The Re3 Glass project introduces a novel, reversible building system comprising dry‐assembled, interlocking cast components out of waste glass.

  • Sounding Soil

    Sounding Soil

    Marcus Maeder

    Sounding Soil began when Marcus Maeder one day, out of sheer curiosity, stuck a self-developed, highly sensitive needle microphone into the ground on an alpine pasture in the Valais/Switzerland.

  • Stymphalian Birds

    Stymphalian Birds

    Audrey Briot

    Stymphalian Birds is an art installation in which complex haptic interactions with feathers are sonified in acoustic soundscapes.

  • The Net Wanderer – A tour of suspended handshakes

    The Net Wanderer – A tour of suspended handshakes

    Cheng Guo

    The Net Wanderer is a research project that explores the connection between the critical network gateways in China and the infrastructure running these gateways.

  • The Substitute

    The Substitute

    Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg

    The Substitute explores a paradox: our preoccupation with creating new life forms, while neglecting existing ones.

  • Topographie Digitale

    Topographie Digitale

    DataPaulette

    Topographie Digitale is an interactive installation. This landscape uses electrically functionalized and pleated textiles as sensitive surfaces reacting to touch to interact with a video-projected digital clone of this scenery.

  • Voicing Borders

    Voicing Borders

    Irakli Sabekia

    On the Eastern boundary of Europe, razor-wire fence stretches across Georgia. It marks territories occupied by the Russian invasion of 2008. Voicing Borders is an installation addressing this situation.