Evan Roth, Internet Landscapes (Sydney, 2016), 2014 – ongoing
Since last year, HeK, the House of Electronic Arts in Basel and Swiss art magazine Kunstbulletin have been awarding a prize for “net based” artworks. The prize aims to support works that use the Internet as the site for production and as a medium for distribution.
This year, I was part of the jury together with researcher and curator Annet Dekker; Sabine Himmelsbach, director of HeK in Basel; Raffael Dörig, director of Kunsthaus Langenthal, Langenthal; Domenico Quaranta, a curator, critic and one of the motors of Center for the Arts of the Information Age in Brescia.
A few days ago, we selected the 10 nominees for you to vote and decide who will get the audience award. We also agreed on a winner but we’ll keep it secret until the award ceremony takes place at HeK on the 22nd of April. Only thing i can say is that i am uncommonly happy with the winning artwork.
The shortlist of the 10 nominees is now online and you can vote for your favorite project at the end of the page. The winner of the audience award will also be announced on 22 April.
Check out the voting page, either in german or in english. There’s even a (very long) trailer!
All the info is on the award page but i’ll quickly list the projects below. As you will see, they reflect the wide-range of practices (artistic or not) that internet facilitates: archiving, sharing and remixing, exploiting human beings, visualizing distant lands, automatizing processes, etc.
Rosa Menkman, DCT:SYPHONING: where Victoria satirical literature meets JPEG image compression technology.
Émilie Brout & Maxime Marion, Clichés: the “Fuck You” monologue from Spike Lee’s film 25th Hour interpreted by image popularity algorithms.
Michael Mandiberg, FDIC Insured: the logos of the banks that failed during the Great Recession saved for posterity.
RYBN.ORG, ADM XI: a collection of highly irrational trading algorithms created by 10 artists and competing in a marketplace provided by RYBN.ORG.
Evan Roth, Internet Landscapes: “network located videos” of the sites where Internet submarine fiber optic cables come ashore.
James Coupe, General Intellect: a generative database of thousands of videos produced by Amazon Mechanical Turk workers asked to standard a working day.
Aram Bartholl, Keep Alive: an electronic library of survival guides that you can access only if you heat up a big stone with a fire.
Jonas Lund, Fair Warning: a rapid fire of binary questions that parody the vapid questionnaires or tests we do online.
Niko Princen, Vlinder: a butterfly that travels from smartphone to smartphone.
Marc Lee, 10.000 moving cities – same but different: a VR simulation of cities generated in real time using the material from various social networks.
Aram Bartholl, Keep Alive, 2015