This discussion attracted my attention for two reasons, and although I
am not an expert, I hope I may be able to contribute something,
despite having some difficulty keeping up with the posts so far.

I work as a translator based in Linz, Austria, and among the many
artists and authors I translate for, Gerhard Dirmoser is one whose
work is especially important to me personally. Now that Ars
Electronica is over, I hope there may be more discussion of his work
here.

The second reason why this discussion attracted my attention is the
mention of the Prix Ars Electronica. Because I worked on the book
documenting the results of the competition for many years, I had the
privilege of attending the jury meetings every year until 2002.
Although I had no say in the developments, being only the first in a
long line of people who had to work with the juries' decisions and
with a responsibility for helping to communicate those decisions at
various stages of the process, I paid very close attention.

The introduction of this month's theme mentions the current categories
of Digital Communities; Computeranimation/Visual Effects; Digital
Musics; Interactive Art; Net Vision (by the way, the Prix also
includes "u19", which is open to people under the age of 19 living in
Austria, and "Next Idea", a competition for proposals for a
residency). What I see as one of the greatest strengths of the Prix,
however, is the way the categories have changed over time since the
competition was first instituted in 1987, attempting to react to new
developments in order to recognize new kinds of work that did not fit
into any of the existing categories.

Although I don't know how the original decisions about organizing the
Prix were made (I first became involved in 1990 as a substitute
proofreader), I think this openness to change was made possible by not
defining specific guidelines for each category. This meant that each
jury had to come to a new agreement every year about their
understanding of what they were looking for, and this understanding
changed according to each specific constellation of experts with
different backgrounds. When juries found that the existing categories
didn't seem to be attracting the kind of work they were interested in,
the categories changed: Computer Music took a different direction as
Digital Musics, for example, or the expansion of Computer Animation
into Computer Animation/Visual Effects allowed for a greater
differentiation taking vastly different production conditions into
consideration.

I agree with Susanne's comments about "Listening Post" in the
category of Interactive Art this year, and I suspect that this
category of the competition is about to undergo a more radical change.
It was not addressed in the Statement of the Jury, but there
already seemed to be a growing dissatisfaction with the category of
Interactive Art when I left in 2002 - it doesn't seem to make sense
any more, the way it did several years ago. However, since ORF (the
Austrian Broadcasting Corporation), which initiated and conducted the
competition, has now withdrawn and turned it over entirely to Ars
Electronica, how the competition may continue is an open question.

One of the problems that I have seen with this competition is, in my
opinion, a lack of transparency. Year after year I was impressed with
the quality of the discussions in different juries, with the way very
knowledgeable people from different backgrounds as artists,
theoreticians, curators, etc. managed to reach a consensus about what
they were looking for among hundreds of entries. Sometimes the Jury
Statements were very informative and illuminating, but I also found
many of the Statements disappointing in comparison with the
discussions I had listened to. I suspect that this problem contributes
to the way that the Prix - often apparently indistinguishable from Ars
Electronica as a whole - frequently seems to be perceived as more
monolithic and determining that it actually is (although some of
the people behind it might like to be able to claim that much power).

In the course of discussions and correspondence with different
people this summer about the opening of the positions of Artistic
Director and Managing Director of Ars Electronica, which was announced
in June, it was interesting to see how many people seized on the Prix
as an aspect of Ars Electronica seriously in need of change. It was
suggested that competitions are altogether anachronistic, a relic of
the 20th century that should be abandoned now, or that the value
judgement inherent to a competition like this is counterproductive. I
have translated far too many self-glorifying press releases to have
any kind of a realistic perspective of the influence of competitions
like the Prix Ars Electronica, but I am not entirely convinced that
the Prix has outlived its usefulness. However, it may actually be more
useful in terms of providing a "historical" overview of past
developments than in participating in current and future developments.
I think this is where Gerhard Dirmoser's Memory Theater study of 25
Years of Ars Electronica comes in, but that is another topic.

I'm sorry this ended up so lengthy, but in conclusion I want to stress
that I have no affiliation with Ars Electronica (except that AE
provides a periodic source of income for many people like myself, who
happen to live in Linz and who happen to have something to do with art
and computers), I can only state my own opinions based on my
observations over the years.
Aileen