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:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: From: Rafael Lozano-Hemmer <[log in to unmask]> Date: December 2, 2004 1:20:04 PM EST To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Life 7.0 Jury Statement Life 7.0, 2004 http://www.vidalife.org The jury for the Life 7.0 competition in Madrid – Chris Csikszentmihalyi (USA), Daniel García Andújar (Spain), Rafael Lozano-Hemmer (MEX/CAN), José Carlos Mariátegui (Peru), Fiona Raby (UK) and Nell Tenhaaf (CAN) – reviewed 60 artworks that utilise artificial life concepts and techniques. These pieces were pre-selected from a group of 82 submissions received from 24 countries. The Telefonica Foundation in Spain will give out the following awards: SHARED FIRST PRIZE (4,000 Euros each) “Spore 1.1” S.W.A.M.P. (Douglas Easterly) USA Spore 1.1 makes visible, in an ironic manner, the artificiality of our immediate reality by relating the business market to the ecosystem. The artist purchased a plant at the Home Depot superstore and inserted it in a mechanized installation that is connected to the Internet via a wireless connection and programmed with open source software. The installation periodically checks the value of Home Depot’s stock over the internet, activating a watering system: if share values are up the plant gets watered. The underlined paradox is that Home Depot guarantees the well being of the plant for one year and, if the plant dies due to either falling or rising share values it has to be replaced by the multinational, —a contract relating life and death. “Universal Whistling Machine” Marc Böhlen / JT Rinker Canada For hundreds of years, technologists have tried to design machines that can speak and understand human language -- a problem they have yet to fully solve. One 17th century automaton, Baron von Kempler’s artificial chess-playing Turk, famously defeated several of the best players in Europe. All it could say was “check.” Today, if one calls a typical US corporation to get information or to settle a bill, it’s almost impossible to reach a human being; instead, you get a synthetic, automated teller, usually with a chipper woman’s voice. Yet these tellers can only understand a few words, because language, like most aspects of human culture, is difficult to compute, complex and florid. Marc Böhlen and J.T. Rinker are artists whose most recent effort to develop a communication system may be one that computers can finally understand: The Universal Whistling Machine, a tone-based based interpreter of whistles. Using advanced signal-processing computation -- similar to the chips in mobile phones -- their system can extract whistles from other sounds, and can exchange passages with humans, each other, and even animals. Over time, it builds a database of every whistle it’s ever heard, increasing its vocabulary and range. What looks at first like a simple process becomes ever more interesting, a technical mocking bird that’s either mimicking or earnestly trying to communicate. This project also received the Public award as it was the most voted during the award presentation in Madrid. [...] ANNOUNCEMENTS For next year's edition of the competition, the Telefonica Foundation has doubled the prize money: 20.000 euros will be given awarded to completed international projects and 20.000 euros for the production of new projects by artists from Latin America and Spain. Any non-profit, educational, art or media centers that would like to receive the reference DVD "The best of Life 7.0", please contact Alicia Carabias <[log in to unmask]> ------------------------------------------------------------------- Beryl Graham, Senior Research Fellow, New Media Art School of Arts, Design, Media and Culture, University of Sunderland Tel: +44 191 515 2896 [log in to unmask] CRUMB web resource for new media art curators http://www.crumbweb.org