2024 Winners

How might an installation engage not with humans directly, but with their minds? AUTOPOIESIS offers an experience that defies easy interpretation, oscillating between activation and deceleration. It utilizes our sensory system, converting light and sound into neurophysiological processes, exploring how audio-visual stimuli affect the brain.

Libraries are democratic places, open to everybody, and as the inscription at the entrance to Epicurus’ Garden Kêpos stated: “Stranger, your time will be pleasant here”. Bibliokepos aspires to rethink the public libraries in Seville as facilities in a climate emergency scenario. The project explores the future of existing libraries as shelters, imagining them as…

Botto is a new kind of art form: a decentralized autonomous artist existing at the intersection of machine creativity and decentralized social coordination. Each week Botto creates thousands of prompts and images employing machine learning algorithms to generate captivating digital artworks, all unedited by humans.

It is an open secret that the hardware in our smart devices contains not only plastics but also ‘conflict minerals’ such as copper and gold. Technology is not neutral. We investigate alternative hardware from locally sourced materials from a feminist perspective, to develop and speculate upon renewable practices.

Destination Earth is a multi-sensory installation revealing the connection that ties atmosphere and ocean, humans and inhabitants of the sea, into a flow of interconnected motions.  Warming waters and changes in the overall water circulation are impacting sound propagation in the ocean, sea mammal migratory patterns and survival, influencing in return our climate and the…

FORMATA is a multi-sensory art installation, featuring lively and autonomous blobs within an experimental reactor crafted to simulate the conditions of an alien world with liquid formamide. The vibrant blobs that inhabit this ‘mini-planet’ are composed of abiotic fatty acids, amino acids, and hydrocarbons—echoing the organic materials found in meteorites and comets.

Godmode Epochs is a single and multiplayer AI training clicker game set among the lined shelves of an infinite, simulated supermarket. Each playthrough is a numbered “training epoch” during which players race against time to teach an AI to identify products. As players inevitably frustrate the AI, they are taken into its mind—a dungeon filled…

The GR-AI-N project seeks to harness the potential of discarded materials from the wood industry. This involves a type of digital craft that is grounded on computer vision and robotics. Post-scanning, AI-powered tools are employed to extract wood’s grain patterns, texture, imperfections. This data is used to enable unique designs that harmonize with the natural…

Low Carbon Chinatown (LCC) is an interactive urban intervention, participatory platform, and meal-as-performance, founded on AI and data science, addressing the Climate Crisis through the lens of global agri-food systems. Using Asian Chinese diasporic food culture as a starting point, it engages large groups of cross-generational diasporic East and Southeast Asians (ESEA) in the UK…

The concept of human-machine peer learning (HMPL), where a human learns from the machine (e.g. reading, foreign language) at the same time as the machine learns from the human (e.g. speech recognition), is deployed in the book-like artefact ready to narrate wisdom of ancient India.

Nishikigoi NFT is a project that supports diverse cultures by connecting art and technology with local communities. We work to create a new type of community that uses blockchain technology to preserve the vital local resources that we need to live.

Prometheus Firebringer is a lecture-performance about generative AI, technology and power. On the performance side, the predictive text model GPT-4 generates speculative versions of the lost final play of Aeschylus’ Prometheia trilogy. Each night, a chorus of AI-generated Greek masks performs a new iteration. On the lecture side, Dorsen delivers a talk made up entirely…

‘European-style’ refrigerators can only be operated with a large solar system that costs the equivalent of a year’s income or more. Especially during the extreme summer heat, the absence of adequate cooling systems has detrimental effects on the quality of life. At the same time, many people are not keen to explore alternatives that are…

We investigate the potential of producing lab-grown clitorises by isolating stem cells from menstrual fluid and 3D-bioprinting them into anatomically accurate gel supports (clits) for in vitro growth. We have differentiated the cells into neuronal types to speculate creating clitorises that respond ‘intelligently’ to stimuli through cultured neural networks.

Soft Collision (2024) looks at the potential of safe physical interaction by embracing collision rather than avoiding it. Through a deformable, pneumatic membrane that serves as a tangible interface to foster direct manipulation and live programming, making interactions more intuitive and inclusive.

Solar Protocol is a planetary-scale network of solar-powered servers, installed and maintained by volunteers around the world. The servers collectively host the Solar Protocol web platform at http://solarprotocol.net/, serving it from whichever server is in the most sunshine and therefore generating the most energy, at the time.

The destruction and subsequent occupation of Mariupol by the Russian Armed Forces have fragmented its communities, leaving most survivors dispersed across different regions of Ukraine and other parts of Europe, and the city beyond reconstruction. This project looks at the bombing of the Mariupol Drama Theater as an emblem of Russia’s strategies of terror. Our…

The Urban Biotope project operates on the borderline between human and non-human habitats. The 15 cm thick concrete screens for the building envelope create an interconnected cellular space for various biological species, surrounding the building with a self-sufficient ecosystem. Carefully sized cavities provide a favorable environment for various species of plants, insects, and nesting birds.