[spectre] VIDA 13.2 prizes announcement

[MONICA BELLO]

Dear friends,

Since 1999, VIDA Art and Artificial Life International Competition has  
awarded artistic projects using technological media that offer highly  
innovative approaches to research into artificial life.

We are very proud to announce VIDA 13.2 awards. The submitted projects  
were examined by an international jury comprising the following  
members: Mónica Bello (Spain), Jens Hauser (France), Karla Jasso  
(Mexico), Sally Jane Norman (New Zealand/France), Simon Penny (USA/ 
Australia), Nell Tenhaaf (Canada) and Francisco Serrano, Executive  
Director of Fundación Telefónica.

1st Prize, awarded with 18,000 €
Naked on Pluto by Aymeric Mansoux, Marloes de Valk and Dave Griffiths  
(Neatherlands)
Naked on Pluto proposes a playful yet disturbing online game world,  
developed with Free/ Libre Open Source Software, which parodies the  
insidiously invasive traits of much "social software". The city of  
"Elastic Versailles" is animated by the quirky combinatorial logics of  
a community of fifty seven AI bots that glean Facebook data from  
subscribers to the game. Naked on Pluto's bot crew, which are hard to  
distinguish from other agents in this text-based environment, are  
dysfunctional gatekeepers whose access-control means are broken by the  
participants only to be elastically "healed" by the bots. Players  
attempt to override the game's restrictions, teaming up in order to  
ultimately crash and escape from the system. Reporting on activities  
via a blog and Twitter, and issuing a constant stream of incitations  
to click, declare, poke and buy, the bots run havoc with one's own and  
one's friends' data, generating more or less spurious links with  
chillingly escalating speed. Disconcertingly familiar faces and  
information from one's personal and associated profiles are  
indiscriminately blended in a brash prosumer landscape which, like the  
original Versailles, is designed for promotional parades of  
inseparable personal and ideological attributes.

2nd Prize, awarded with 14,000 €
Ocular Revision by Paul Vanouse (United States)
A provocative live installation lies in the biotechnological creation  
of DNA images that are radically different from the abstracted banding  
patterns now familiar from media images. Ocular Revision turns this  
“genetic mapping” on its head, remediating it in the sense of both  
restoration and opposition. Vanouse proposes a return to the more  
holistic view of biology that was promoted within the sciences prior  
to the late twentieth century characterization of DNA as code. His  
technical strategy was to build an entirely novel circular (rather  
than rectangular) gel electrophoresis apparatus. It still uses  
electrical current to pull DNA through the gel; here, the DNA moves  
not across linearly, but from the perimeter toward the centre of the  
rig. The result is DNA visualization as a flow or flowering. Further,  
Vanouse makes maps from DNA, rather than of DNA.

3rd Prize, awarded with 8,000 €
Protei by Cesar Harada (France/Japan)
Protei “an open source sailing drone”, is an ambitious, open and  
distributed interdiscipilinary design project directed at an issue of  
global environmental concern – ocean oil spills and the limitations  
and toxicity of conventional clean up methods. The goal of Protei is  
the development and production of autonomous sailing vessels which  
trail long oil-absorbent tails behind them. Protei thus combines  
‘green’ motivations, a net-distributed collaborative design process,  
and an open source ethos with a conception of autonomous machine  
agency. Instigated by Cesar Harada after the Deepwater Horizon  
disaster, Protei involves an international network of specialists. The  
project has developed a number of sailing prototypes and several  
unique innovations in naval architecture. Protei blurs distinctions  
between science, design, art, environmental activism and political  
activism.

Honorary Mentions:
That Which Lives in Me by Dmitry Bulatov y Alexey Chebykin (Russia)
Zoanthroid – a Hybrid Entity, a Technile Organism Felix Hardmood Beck  
(Germany)
Oh!m1gas: biomimetric stridulation environment Kuai Shen (Ecuador)
Intelligent Bacteria: Saccharomyces CerevisiaeJ. Togar Abraham, N.  
Akbar, A. Tri, V. Christiawan (Indonesia)
Back, here, below, formidable [the rebith of prehistoric creatures]  
Marguerite Humeau (France)
Growth Pattern Allison Kudla (United States)
TransducersVerena Friedrich (Germany)

In the category of Incentives for Production which awards no yet made  
projects by artists who work in Spain, Portugal or Latinoamerica, VIDA  
13.2 has awarded the following projects:
Concerto fotosintético by Paula Pin (Spain)
Faith (Molding Faith - The Shape of the Signifier) by Daria Czibulka y  
Ivor Diosi (Spain)
Institute for the Studies of Biological Enigmas - Mar Menor Research  
by Clara Boj and Diego Diaz (Spain)
Territorio Exquisito by María Pía Vásquez (Chile/México)
Pixel Bite by Diego Suárez (Spain)
Speak by Rejane Cantoni and Leonardo Cantoni (Brazil)

The main prizes will be show in ARCO Art Fair in February 2012.

You can find more information of the projects in Fundación Telefónica  
website:
www.fundaciontelefonica.com/vida


Best regards,

MB




------
Mónica Bello Bugallo
Artistic Director of VIDA
Art and Artificial Life International Awards
www.fundaciontelefonica.com/vida

Current activities:

VIDA 13.2 Prizes announcement:
http://www.fundacion.telefonica.com/en/arteytecnologia/certamen_vida/index.htm

ISEA paper "VIDA, new discourses, tropes and modes in art and  
artificial life research":
http://isea2011.sabanciuniv.edu/paper/vida-new-discourses-tropes-and-modes-art-and-artificial-life-research

e.mail: mb at monicabello.org
mobile: +34 654 56 32 39
skype: monicacapsula









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