2019 Honorary Mentions

This is grown.

Jen Keane

This is grown. was motivated by a frustration with plastics and a visible disparity between scientific research and design manifestations around natural materials. After all, nature has had 3.8 billion years to perfect the ultimate circular economy: Life. Maybe we can still learn something.

The Murder of Pavlos Fyssas

Forensic Architecture

Shortly after midnight on 18 September 2013, Pavlos Fyssas, a young Greek anti-fascist rapper, was murdered in his home neighbourhood of Keratsini, Athens. Both the killer and others who participated in the attack were members of the neo-Nazi organization Golden Dawn.

SLAP – See Like A Pony

Sabine Engelhardt

With SLAP I want to make robotics not only understandable but truly approachable. Clifford Nass drew the comparison of robots with domesticated animals. They are useful, but also dangerous. But, how do we communicate with animals? Can we feel them? How does it work?

BLP-2000D

BCL – Georg Tremmel and Shiho Fukuhara

An unofficial ‘Black List’ of potentially harmful and forbidden DNA Sequences has been created and is shared amongst the companies—officially for bio-security reasons. Because of the expensive chemicals involved in the process, it was not really feasible to create a DIY DNA Synthesiser—until now.

Anatomy of an AI System

Kate Crawford / AI Now Institute and Vladan Joler / SHARE Lab

Anatomy of an AI System is a large-scale map and long-form essay investigating the human labor, data, and planetary resources required to build and operate an Amazon Echo. The exploded view diagram combines and visualizes three central, extractive processes that are required to run a large-scale artificial intelligence system: material resources, human labor, and data.

SimCath

Fernando Bello, ICCESS & Salomé Bazin, Cellule studio

How do surgeons prepare for an operation, when they know that the smallest mistake could be the line between life and death? That was the question Cellule faced when developing SimCath, a cardiology suite for simulation training.

Arte Eletrônica Indígena

Thydêwá

The Arte Electrônica Indígena (AEI) project was designed and executed by the NGO Thydêwá. It consisted of a series of ten short artistic residencies in indigenous communities in the Brazilian Northeast in order to cocreate works of electronic art. These were exhibited to the public at the Museum of Modern Art, Salvador da Bahia, in August 2018 and have since toured the indigenous communities themselves.

Biocomputer Rhythms

Eduardo Reck Miranda

Biocomputer Rhythms is a piece for prepared piano and percussion. It is a musical duet between a piano and a biocomputer: the biocomputer listens to the piano and produces musical responses during the performance. The responses are played on percussion instruments and on the same piano played by the pianist.