2022 Winners

Photo: tom mesic

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 2022

  • Antarctic Resolution

    Antarctic Resolution

    Giulia Foscari (IT) & UNLESS

    Grand Prize – Innovative Collaboration: Awarded for innovative collaboration between industry or technology and the arts that opens new pathways for innovation. What happens in Antarctica does not stay in Antarctica. Accounting for 10% of the landmass, 70% of the freshwater, and 90% of the ice of Planet Earth, Antarctica is the largest repository of…

  • Holly+

    Holly+

    Holly Herndon, Mathew Dryhurst, Herndon Dryhurst Studio (US)

    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. Holly+ is Holly Herndon’s digital twin. She is using machine learning to create freely available online instruments and tools that encourage anyone to…

Honorary Mentions 2022

  • A sun architecture – The party is in full swing

    A sun architecture – The party is in full swing

    Stéphane Bonnard, KompleX KapharnaüM

    Honorary Mention www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DA7REdf8BI Switching on a device today is an automatic, almost magical gesture. To rethink this relationship to energy, we sought to make concrete the effort necessary for its production. And to raise a political question: if energy is limited, what do we decide to use it for? The challenge is twofold: to raise…

  • Ambient Weaving

    Ambient Weaving

    Hosoo Co., Ltd., Yasuaki Kakehi Lab, The University of Tokyo, ZOZO NEXT, Inc.

    Honorary Mention https://ambientweaving.lab.zozo.jp/en In its pursuit of beauty for over 1,200 years, with its distinctive structures and design, HOSOO’s Nishijin textiles have a rich history of pushing innovation by incorporating technology. This research project named Ambient Weaving aims to complement this by experimenting with the use of Nishijin textile as a medium for representing characteristics…

  • Avatar Robot Cafe DAWN ver.β

    Avatar Robot Cafe DAWN ver.β

    Ory Lab Inc., OYAMATSU Design Studio, TASUKI Inc.

    Honorary Mention https://dawn2021.orylab.com/en/ https://orylab.com/en/ youtu.be/vj1z6HEAkYY Besides developing OriHime and OriHime-D, which users regardless of age, gender, or disability can remotely operate, Ory Lab has created the Dawn Avatar Robot Café, where users work and visit via robots. Users can seek employment via the company’s Avatar Guild staffing agency, thus remaining active in society. The goal…

  • Cleaning Emotional Data

    Cleaning Emotional Data

    Elisa Giardina Papa

    Honorary Mention http://www.elisagiardinapapa.org Cleaning Emotional Data is a three channel video installation that addresses new forms of precarious labor emerging within artificial intelligence economies. Specifically, it focuses on the global infrastructure of microworkers who “clean” data to train emotion-recognition algorithms. These workers label, categorize, annotate, and validate large amounts of data, thereby enabling AI to…

  • Digital Violence: How the NSO Group Enables State Terror

    Digital Violence: How the NSO Group Enables State Terror

    Forensic Architecture in collaboration with Laura Poitras/Praxis Films

    Honorary Mention https://www.digitalviolence.org/ This project maps the use of the malware Pegasus, developed by the Israeli cyber-weapons company NSO Group, against activists, journalists, and human rights defenders worldwide. To elucidate the extent of its reach and impact, we produced a navigable digital platform, video investigations recounting the stories of individuals targeted with Pegasus, a sonic…

  • Inanimate Species

    Inanimate Species

    Joana Moll

    Honorary Mention https://www.janavirgin.com/INANIMATESPECIES/ In 1971, a group of international engineers designed the first commercial microprocessor in history, Intel 4004. This event marked a decisive moment in recent history, as for the first time it was possible to translate intelligence to an inanimate object, which opened a new era in technological development and the emergence of…

  • Mikromedas AdS/CFT 001

    Mikromedas AdS/CFT 001

    Valery Vermeulen, Concertgebouw Brugge, Baltan Laboratories

    Honorary Mention https://www.valeryvermeulen.net/works/mikromedas/ Mikromedas AdS/CFT 001 is part of the multimedia project Mikromedas. Mikromedas is a data-driven music project in which the compositions produced use data stemming from space, deep space, and astrophysical simulation models. Unique systems and innovations in using astrophysical data and models as new tools for artistic creation were designed to realize…

  • The Exploded View Beyond Building

    The Exploded View Beyond Building

    Biobased Creations, Pascal Leboucq & Lucas De Man

    Honorary Mention https://theexplodedview.com The Exploded View Beyond Building (TEV BB) is an iconic exhibition in the form of a full-size house that is made entirely of biobased materials, circular construction methods, and stories about the changing value chain of which it is part. It showcases over 100 biobased materials. Our goal was to show what…

  • The Plant Intelligence Plan

    The Plant Intelligence Plan

    Zhang Tianyi

    Honorary Mention With ecological relationships as the breakthrough point and based on plant intelligence research, the Plant Intelligence Plan recognizes the initiative and rights of plants. The plan uses biotechnology tools and materials to restore the ecological relationship between commercially bred crops and animals, which human beings have alienated. Ecological Art often discusses and thinks…

  • UITSLOOT

    UITSLOOT

    Gijs Schalkx

    Honorary Mention https://uitsloot.nl A year-long quest on keeping the combustion engine alive in a fossil free future and celebrating the power and agency that DIY culture brings. Why depend on big corporations and their promises to save the world when you can do it yourself? The Slootmotor is the one vehicle that truly delivers an…

Nominations 2022

  • Alone Together

    Alone Together

    Anna Anderegg, Swan Park, Marco Barotti, Sara Kim

    Nomination https://annaanderegg.com/Alone-Together Alone Together is a performative piece and a film, by Swiss choreographer Anna Anderegg. It was premiered at the Gwangju Biennale in April 2021. The work was created with a team of artists from Europe and South Korea. For 30 years, we have seen the Internet gradually seeping into every corner of our…

  • Digital SUPERPOWER!

    Digital SUPERPOWER!

    Ling Tan, SUPERPOWER!

    Nomination https://superpower.lingql.com/ SUPERPOWER! is a community-led initiative that enables groups of people/communities to make sense of self-determined and complex urban issues in their environment via their own subjective perception. Participants use a set of social, gesture-driven, and data-collecting wearables to devise data experiments that capture their own perception of the issue in the form of…

  • Ent-

    Ent-

    Libby Heaney

    Nomination https://lightartspace.org/programme/ent Quantum computers are being intensely pursued by big tech companies, but they are not yet in the public’s consciousness. When fully developed, their immense processing power will undoubtedly change the world, enabling humans to see deeper into reality than ever before. This project aims to raise awareness around quantum computing through new visual…

  • Entanglement

    Entanglement

    ANNEX

    Nomination https://entanglement.annex.ie/Pavilion Entanglement explores the materiality of data and the interwoven human, environmental, and cultural impacts of information and communication technologies. It highlights how data production and consumption territorialize the physical landscape and examines Ireland’s place in the pan-national evolution of data infrastructure by foregrounding the material footprint of the internet and cloud services. The…

  • Gran Turismo Sophy

    Gran Turismo Sophy

    Pete Wurman and the teams at Sony AI, Polyphony Digital and Sony Interactive Entertainment Inc.

    Nomination https://www.gran-turismo.com/world/gran-turismo-sophy/ Gran Turismo SophyTM (GT Sophy) is a breakthrough in AI featured as a cover article in the Feb 10, 2022 edition of Nature. Sony AI in partnership with Polyphony Digital, maker of Gran Turismo and Sony Interactive Entertainment, which provided the cloud infrastructure for massive scale AI training, developed a revolutionary superhuman autonomous…

  • Key Workers. Migrants’ contribution to the COVID-19 response

    Key Workers. Migrants’ contribution to the COVID-19 response

    Federica Fragapane, Alex Piacentini, Marta Foresti

    Nomination https://migrants-keyworkers-covid-19.odi.digital/ Key workers is a data visualization project designed with ODI. It aims to create a visual narrative of migrant workers’ contributions to the COVID-19 response, showing examples of reforms, new initiatives and campaigns on their contributions in healthcare and beyond. The project’s core element is represented by trees as a visual metaphor for…

  • LIFE SUPPORT SYSTEM (Ecosystem Services Estimation Experiment)

    LIFE SUPPORT SYSTEM (Ecosystem Services Estimation Experiment)

    DISNOVATION.ORG (Maria Roszkowska, Nicolas Maigret & Baruch Gottlieb)

    Nomination http://disnovation.org/lss.php This artistic provocation seeks to estimate the orders of magnitude of critical ecosystem services fundamental to all planetary life processes. It is common to describe our relationships with society, the world, and the biosphere with metaphors from economics, which has specific understandings of value. Today’s prevailing economics conventions are unable to recognize intrinsic…

  • Neo Stone Age

    Neo Stone Age

    Erco Lai

    Nomination https://www.behance.net/gallery/122420521/Geopolymerization-mineral-forming-3 The concrete industry is at the root of several environmental issues; high CO2 emissions in several parts of the production chain, pollution related to mining, and biodiversity loss in a world more and more covered by concrete. We are in urgent need of alternatives to build in more harmony with our surroundings. What…

  • Political Atmospherics

    Political Atmospherics

    Manifest Data Lab

    Nomination https://www.behance.net/gallery/122420521/Geopolymerization-mineral-forming-3 Political Atmospherics consists of 3 x large 3D printed models of atmospheric CO2 derived from climate data and 2 projections that animate the same information as a group of connected works. These works construct geographic topographies producing bitter-sweet crustal geologies, scars, ridges, and archipelagos of carbon emissions, that describe how a focus on…

  • Project PLATEAU

    Project PLATEAU

    Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism

    Nomination https://www.mlit.go.jp/plateau/ A project led by Japan’s MLIT: Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism to develop and open data on 3D city models throughout Japan. The project aims to make urban policy sustainable, human-centric, and agile through the development of 3D city models, use cases, and promotion of their use. The goal is not…

  • Quorum Sensing: Skin Flora Signal System

    Quorum Sensing: Skin Flora Signal System

    Helena Nikonole, Lucy Ojomoko

    Nomination https://nikonole.com/quorumsensing Quorum Sensing: Skin Flora Signal System project develops DIY approaches for modifying human skin microbiome in order to produce smells that can be easily detected to self-diagnose or prevent diseases. Moreover this project connects three kingdoms in a symbiotic relationship, uniting bacteria, plants, and animals (such as humans). By creating genetically modified skin…

  • SolarSoundSystem

    SolarSoundSystem

    Cédric Carles

    Nomination http://www.solarsoundsystem.org As one of the projects of Atelier 21, Solar Sound System offers sound systems powered by the sun and bicycles for events, as well as an educative tool to introduce sustainability to the public. Thanks to its design, participants can enjoy music with 100% renewable energy generated speakers, turntables, and sound mixers. Since…

  • SpreeBerlin – The Voice of a River

    SpreeBerlin – The Voice of a River

    Jakob Kukula

    Nomination http://spreeberlin.de In the context of the climate crisis and the accompanying social change, the project examines the relationship between Berlin and the Spree, the urban space, the citizens, and the body of water. How can the river be given its own “political” voice and what can contribute to creating more awareness of the Spree…

  • Susceptible

    Susceptible

    Anna Dumitriu, Alex May

    Nomination https://annadumitriu.co.uk/portfolio/susceptible Susceptible is a data-driven interactive digital artwork based on cutting-edge research from CRyPTIC, an international consortium led by the University of Oxford. CRyPTIC’s research analysed thousands of images of the tuberculosis (TB) bacteria growing in the presence of different antibiotics. Researchers then combined that data with information about the whole genome sequences of…

  • Symbiosis

    Symbiosis

    Polymorf in collaboration with Studio Biarritz

    Nomination https://www.symbiosis.show A virtual reality experience that turns self-evident truths upside down How does it feel to be a slime mold? Or a toad? Or a plant? The virtual reality experience Symbiosis from the Dutch collective Polymorf is a unique experience for all the senses. Wearing a specially designed suit full of sensors, you temporarily…

  • The Glass Room: Misinformation Community Edition

    The Glass Room: Misinformation Community Edition

    Tactical Tech

    Nomination https://www.theglassroom.org/misinformation The Glass Room: Misinformation Community Edition is an interactive community engagement exhibition that invites people to think critically and proactively about their relationship with digital technologies. It is a space to reflect, discuss, and debate how technology impacts our daily lives and how we consume information, focusing on misinformation, political influence, and democracy.…

  • Vertical Walking

    Vertical Walking

    Rombout Frieling

    Nomination http://www.rombout.design/verticalwalking.html Our European population is ageing and our cities have become denser and hence more vertical. Stairs require a lot of effort and can become a real challenge for people as they get older. Elevators seem to suggest that we have given up on finding new ways of using our body (other than pushing…

  • WITHER – A Slice of Rainforest Disappearing at the Rate of Deforestation

    WITHER – A Slice of Rainforest Disappearing at the Rate of Deforestation

    Thijs Biersteker

    Nomination https://thijsbiersteker.com/wither-2021 The deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon continues at an alarming rate. In an ongoing partnership between the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and artist Thijs Biersteker, Wither is a slice of digital rainforest that disappears at the same rate as the Amazon rainforest. It updates every time new data is…