2021 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 2021:

Grand Prize 2021


Remix el Barrio

Remix el Barrio, Food Waste Biomaterial Makers

Anastasia Pistofidou, Marion Real and The Remixers at Fab Lab Barcelona, IaaC (INT)
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.

Oceans in Transformation

Oceans in Transformation

Territorial Agency – John Palmesino and Ann-Sofi Rönnskog (INT)
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 2021

Data Garden

Data Garden is an organism-based data centre. This functional carbon negative data infrastructure is capable of storing and retrieving data from the DNA of plants.

On View

Ania Catherine and Dejha Ti’s seminal interactive performance installation On View (2019), commissioned by the SCAD Museum of Art, examines the generational desire to be the subject of an art experience and that phenomenon’s relationship to addictive interfaces, surveillance capitalism, and data privacy in modern society.

Cloud Studies

Cloud Studies brings together eight recent investigations by Forensic Architecture, each examining different types of toxic clouds and the capacity of states and corporations to occupy airspace and create unliveable atmospheres.

A Lighter Delicacy

A Lighter Delicacy proposes an alternative way to manage feather waste from slaughterhouses by converting its nutrient composition into a new edible product.

The Growing Pavilion

The Growing Pavilion stands as a necessary and viable solution for reducing the rising impacts of climate change and the use of fossil resources.

The Living Light

A ground-breaking technology called Microbial Fuel Cell (MFC) technology enables us to generate energy from organic waste.

mEat me

In mEat me Theresa Schubert draws a radical consequence: if we treat humans the same as we treat animals, we should also be material and food.

The Tides Within Us

A cross-sectoral project centered on utilizing high-end MR research results, The Tides Within Us is an ongoing exploration into the world beyond the limits of our senses at the intersection of art, science, and technology.

Project Habitate

We designed a living wearable that enables people to become the hosts for endangered organisms, which in return gives them a sense of companionship and belonging, advocating a new concept of participatory conservation.

ELEVENPLAY x Rhizomatiks "border 2021"

The dance company, ELEVENPLAY, the director-choreographer, MIKIKO, and the collective led by Daito Manabe and Motoi Ishibashi, Rhizomatiks, presented a dance piece border in 2015. We developed and updated our experiment of 2015 to establish a new expression model for both online and on-site experience for the post-COVID-19 era.

Nominations 2021

Face Lab

A series of projects exploring the outer limits of how we use our face as an interpreter of our environment—or for the surroundings to find out what is going on in our minds.

An Olfactory Biopolitics Nairobi

An Olfactory Biopolitics Nairobi spans the Netherlands to Kenya, linking these geopolitical locations through the thread of scent. The interaction of scent in public space became a means to examine hidden power structures of inequality, using the case study of my home country, Kenya.

The Cleanroom Paradox

Dismantling the deceptively pristine image of the high-tech industry The Cleanroom Paradox unveils the systemic suppression of information on occupational and toxic hazards at semiconductor production sites.

TheirTube

Theirtube is an open-source web service that provides a look into how videos are recommended on other people's YouTube.

Symbiosia

Plant Neurobiologist Stefano Mancuso and artist Thijs Biersteker created an artwork that uncovers the invisible tree-to-tree communication in real time to start a conversation about the effects of climate change.

MycoMythologies

MycoMythologies is a series researching how fungal ontologies could help humans think, learn, and practice multispecies survival through practices of inclusion and caring.

Lovewear

Lovewear is smart underwear that helps people of all abilities to self-explore and enhance their own intimacy and sexuality.

In a Small Room

In a Small Room focuses on two social issues, the first being the problem of poor living conditions in modern metropolitan areas. The second issue is the dazzling advertising designed to inspire in potential consumers the wish to buy a service.

The [Uncertain] Four Seasons

In 2019 we set about reflecting the effects of global warming to date in Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, using historical data to inform a musical system that transposed climate changes upon the original score.

So far the Skies are silent.

What happens if artificial intelligences try to find an answer to one of the oldest mysteries of mankind?

Glacier's Lament

Glaciers are sentinels of climate change. This series of works embodies the stunning beauty, rapid change, fragility, and magnificence of glaciers.

In Event of Moon Disaster

In Event of Moon Disaster illustrates the possibilities of deepfake technologies by reimagining the moon landing.

Para-optic-8

The Para-optic 8 project offers a visual experience that literally reproduces the idea of vision through fingers.

Silencing The Virus

Silencing The Virus is an immersive Sci Art installation that mixes a virtual virus environment with performance, science, ecology, and digital arts.

Shapes and Ladders: Battles of Bias and Bureaucracy

Shapes and Ladders is a video game that shows how systemic racism and sexism can exist through the metaphor of climbing a career ladder.

Genetics Gym

The Genetics Gym is an ongoing research project, depicting a calculated fiction of modified bodies, edited with hypothetical new and emerging genetic technologies, allowing in-depth exploration to question how the internet is affecting human behavior.

Extendable Ears

While living with friends, I realized ‘noise’ is subjective: what’s music for me may torture others.

Constructing Connectivity

Constructing Connectivity is a person-centered stroke rehabilitation method that addresses the need to quicken and improve recovery, motivate the patient, and provide connection to support systems.