Prix Ars Electronica is an international competition for creative work in cyberarts or digital media design. The competition, which is sponsored by the Austrian broadcasting company, has been held annually since 1987. This book is a record of the 2001 competition. For each of six categories of entries, the book contains a statement by jury members assigned to the category, and short descriptions of each “Golden Nica” and “Honorary Mention” winning entry in the category. The descriptions are generally written by the entrants, and are illustrated with screen shots and photographs. A short biography of the winning entrants is included. The book concludes with short biographies of the jury and a list of all entrants. Throughout the book, text is printed in two parallel columns, one in English and the other in German.
The entry categories for the 2001 competition were Net vision, Net excellence, interactive art, animation/visual effects, digital music, and U19 freestyle computing. Net vision and Net excellence awards were given to innovative and original Web sites. Prizewinners included Banja, which offers a collaborative adventure game in monthly episodes, arcade games, communal areas, and media distribution (http://www.banja.com); and Manhattan Timeformations, which presents a layered, cartographic history of the lower half of Manhattan island and an exploded timeline chronicling the real estate development of high-rise office buildings (http://www.skyscraper.org/timeformations).
The interactive art category recognizes creative “installations” that permit an audience to “engage with interfaces and processes that extend their cognitive, imaginative, or emotional state.” One prizewinning entry was Bump, which consists of a pair of catwalks connected by high-speed data transmission lines, configured in such a way that depressions made by a person walking on one catwalk cause vertical motion in the corresponding place on the other catwalk. A closed circuit television allows persons on each catwalk to view persons on the other. Another winner was Remain in Light, which permits a user to capture ambient sound for later interpretation as a visual display.
In the computer animation/special effects category, prizewinners included Le Processus, a computer-animated film relating an allegorical fable about alienation, and the special water effects in the movie The Perfect Storm. Prizewinning entries in the digital music category included The Messy Jesse Fiesta, based on sound recordings from such sources as a pig farm, tearing tree bark, slapping leaves, and home ecstasy experiments; and Matrix, an electro-acoustic composition featuring spatial sound effects.
The U19 freestyle computing category is intended for entrants under age 19. Award winners included Powersphere, a remote-controlled transparent spherical vehicle; and Professor Brosl, an interactive game for the PC.
The enormous task of selecting winners from the over 2000 entries from 62 countries is described by the juries. The interactive art jury, for example, did not have access to the actual installations, but instead had to base their decision on descriptions and videos. Even more difficult was the editors’ task in capturing the essence of the competition in this book, which has several problems, including the largely uninformative descriptions of the entries and the generally poor quality of the illustrations. Although extensive use of computers was undoubtedly made in the creation of the entries, it is barely mentioned. Additional documentation for the competition, in the form of DVDs and VHS cassettes of computer animation/visual effects and CDs of music works, is available through info@prixars.orf.at.
