2020 Winners

These are the winners of the STARTS Prize – Grand prize of the European Commission honoring Innovation in Technology, Industry and Society stimulated by the Arts 2020:

Grand Prize 2020


Eden

EDEN – Ethics – Durability – Ecology – Nature

Olga Kisseleva
TrophyGrand Prize – Innovative Collaboration: Awarded for innovative collaboration between industry or technology and the arts (and the cultural and creative sectors in general) that open new pathways for innovation.

Design by Decay

Design by Decay, Decay by Design

Andrea Ling
TrophyGrand 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.

Honorary Mentions 2020

TransVision

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.

The Wrong

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.

Spoiled Spores

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.

SOMEONE

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.

Sociality

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.

Prosthetic Memory

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

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

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.

Precious Plastic Universe

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

Perception iO

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

c o m p u t e r 1. 0

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.

Nominations 2020

Voicing Borders

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.

Topographie Digitale

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.

The Net Wanderer – A tour of suspended handshakes

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

Stymphalian Birds

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

Sounding Soil

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.

Re3 Glass

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

Re:flex

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.

INNER VALUES

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

Hybrid Living Materials

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.

Hale: An Upgrade on Patient Attire

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.

CONTAIN / Open Cell – Mobile COVID19 Emergency Testing Facilities

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

Compression Cradle

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

Code of Conscience

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

CMD: Experiment in Bio Algorithmic Politics

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.

BETAlight

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.

Be Water by Hong Kongers

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.

aqua_forensic

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.