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: [log in to unmask] mobile: +34 654 56 32 39 skype: monicacapsula