The STARTS Prize is the grand prize of the European Commission that honors projects that demonstrate the successful integration of science, technology and art to contribute to social and economic innovation. Two grand prize winners and up to ten honorary mentions are selected by an international jury each year. The prize is presented by the European Commission, Ars Electronica, BOZAR, and the Waag Society.
S+T+ARTS Prize ’22 Grand Prize – Artistic Exploration
UNLESS
Accounting for 10% of the landmass, 70% of the freshwater, and 90% of the ice of Planet Earth, Antarctica is the largest repository of scientific data on our climate history—essential to inform crucial environmental policies—and the greatest menace to global coastal settlements threatened by the rise in sea levels induced by anthropogenic global warming. The threat that Antarctic ice thinning poses to our own lives and those of future generations is real. The kilometers-thick ice sheet is currently melting at the alarming pace of 200 Olympian swimming pools per minute, and the total meltdown of Antarctic ice would increase global sea levels by 60 meters, launching the largest migration ever witnessed by humanity. UNLESS conceived Antarctic Resolution to catalyse global attention to one of our few Global Commons and create a constituency for our only continent without an indigenous population, with the ambition of contributing to the protection of the Antarctic, and in turn, of our own species.
Holly+, Holly Herndon, Mathew Dryhurst
One of the most important roles artists can play in 21st-century societies is to anticipate the risks, challenges, and opportunities for the many innovations that are emerging from the adoption and evolution of complex sociotechnical systems based on perplexing fields of study such as cryptography or artificial intelligence. Through extensive creative research, critical open experimentation, and innovative collaborations, Holly Herndon, Mathew Dryhurst, and the network of collaborators they weaved between Berlin, New York, and Barcelona, have been able to develop a unique hybrid project with Holly+, merging a new custom voice instrument with a creative platform and a test of a decentralized and cooperative economic model that can have deep implications in changing the power dynamics of copyright and IP in the music industry, while raising questions of the interdependencies of a digital economy, digital sovereignty, and digital identity.
S+T+ARTS Prize ’22 Honorary Mentions
A Sun Architecture – The Party is in Full Swing, Stéphane Bonnard, KompleX KapharnaüM
Ambient Weaving, Hosoo, Yasuaki Kakehi Lab, ZOZO NEXT, Inc.
DAWN Avatar Robot Cafe DAWN ver.β, OryLab Inc.
Cleaning Emotional Data, Elisa Giardina Papa
Digital Violence: How the NSO Group Enables State Terror, Forensic Architecture
Inanimate Species, Joana Moll
Mikromedas AdS/CFT 001, Valery Vermeulen
The Exploded View Beyond Building, Biobased Creations
The Plant Intelligence Plan, Tianyi Zhang
UITSLOOT, Gijs Schalkx
