Kate Crawford (AU) and Vladan Joler (RS) are awarded with the Grand Prize – Artistic Exploration for the work Calculating Empires: A Genealogy of Power and Technology 1500-2025, 2023. While Arts at CERN has been selected for the Grand Prize – Innovative Collaboration. Their projects were selected amongst 1308 applications from 81 countries received from the open call launched in January 2024. The jury for the prize comprised Francesca Bria (IT); Fumi Hirota (JP); Manuela Naveau (AT); Katja Schechtner (AT) and Miha Turšič (SI/NL).
The Prize competition is part of S+T+ARTS (Science, Technology and the Arts), an initiative funded by the European Commission since 2016. STARTS focuses on projects that strive to master the social, ecological and economic challenges that Europe is facing or will be facing in the near future. STARTS is driven by the conviction that, combined with an artistic viewpoint, science and technology open valuable perspectives for research and business in the field of ICT innovation, through a holistic and human-centred approach. Since 2016 this remarkable initiative funded 189 residencies with 6 M € and honoured 238 STARTS Prize projects. Organized by Ars Electronica, the prize competition received 15,928 submissions from 101 different nations between 2016 and 2023.
Two prizes are awarded, each endowed with 20,000 euros. The Grand Prize – Artistic Exploration honours artistic research and works that have the potential to influence or change the way technology is used, applied or perceived. The Grand Prize – Innovative Collaboration is awarded to projects that combine industry or technology and the arts, with the goal of opening new paths for innovation. In addition, 10 more projects receive Honorary Mention and 18 – Nomination. The winning projects will then be featured at Ars Electronica Festival in September 2024 and other events organised by the consortium partners French Tech Grande Provence, INOVA+, Media Solution Center Baden Württemberg, Salzburg Festival, Sónar, T6 Ecosystems, TUD Dresden University of Technology.
The winning projects:
Arts at CERN (Grand Prize – Innovative Collaboration)
Arts at CERN is the arts program of CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics in Geneva, Switzerland. Since 2012, when the first artist in residence arrived, they invite artists to experience how physicists and engineers use the world’s largest and most complex scientific instruments to explore the big questions about the Universe. Arts at CERN fosters meaningful exchanges between artists and scientists, connecting the international cultural community through science and research.
Over 200 artists have participated in residencies, benefiting from being part of CERN’s scientific community of over 15,000 scientists, engineers, and staff. Artists are selected through open calls followed by an evaluation process. Each year, as many as 900 applications from over 90 different countries are received. The residencies are aimed at artists with a distinct interest in the intersection of art, science, and technology, who wish to immerse themselves in the laboratory’s vibrant environment and engage with the diverse scientific community.
By providing access and support, Arts at CERN explores the cultural significance of fundamental research and the possibility of arts to input the scientific research. The program seeks artists’ reflections on the implications of science and technology, offering spaces for artistic dialogue with science and deepening the connection with the CERN community. It also explores the potential of collaboration across disciplinary boundaries and the engagement with the social fabric of science, the historical narratives, or the aspects that make CERN a unique place for artistic enquiry.
Jury Comment: Arts at CERN is a pioneering cultural initiative, reflecting CERN’s exceptional openness and experimental spirit. <…> Arts at CERN has set a global benchmark for arts-science initiatives, influencing programs in Europe, South Korea, and Australia. It has inspired major initiatives such as the European Commission’s STARTS program and the Joint Research Centre’s sci-art program. In today’s rapidly evolving technological landscape, including advancements in AI, quantum computing, and chip technology, the integration of arts, science, and technology is crucial. Arts at CERN exemplifies how leveraging key scientific and technological infrastructures, multidisciplinary talent, and capacity in Europe can drive innovation and foster a collaborative innovation that truly serves the public interest.
Calculating Empires. A Genealogy of Power and Technology 1500-2025, 2023 by Kate Crawford and Vladan Joler (Grand Prize: Artistic Exploration)
Calculating Empires is a large-scale visual manifesto by Kate Crawford and Vladan Joler that critically engages with the relationship between technology and power over five centuries. By merging research and design, science and art, Joler and Crawford go beyond the current spectacles of artificial intelligence to ask how we got here—and consider where we might be going. This vast diagram follows the imperial pathways of power since 1500 across many systems—colonialism, militarization, and automation—to show how they still subjugate and how they might be unwound. By illustrating this history, Calculating Empires charts a new way of seeing our technological present by immersing us in the past, from the birth of European empires to the technology companies of today.
Spanning more than twenty-four meters in length and three meters in height, Calculating Empiresis designed as a diptych. One half focuses on the changing spectrum of communication devices, infrastructures, and computational architectures of algorithms and hardware. The other half tells the story of control and classification across dozens of domains: from time to education, bodies to biometrics, policing to prisons, the biosphere to the astrosphere, and a multitude of military systems. Read together, these maps visualize how technical and social structures co-evolved over centuries, with hundreds of handcrafted illustrations and texts that draw relationships between devices, ideas, and infrastructures.
Jury Comment: By seeing how past powers have calculated, we can begin to calculate the costs of contemporary empires. Calculating Empires thus gives audiences a detailed visual narrative about the relationship between humans, ecologies, and technologies. It traces the ways that technology and power have been entwined over five centuries, through industrialization, imperialism, and automation. It shows how practices of colonialism, militarization, and enclosure operate today and how they might be unwound. It establishes itself as a necessary corrective to the current short-termism in technology criticism and art, which is frequently focused on the most recent spectacles and devices, at the expense of deeper historical and political shifts. Calculating Empires challenges us to redefine our relationship with current socio-technical structures. By asking how we got where we are today, we can (re-)consider where we might be going.
HONORARY MENTIONS:
In addition to the two winning projects, the jury identified 10 Honorary Mentions from all the submissions.
The Echinoidea Future – Adriatic Sensing, 2022, Robertina Šebjanič (SI)
How (not) to get hit by a self-driving car, 2023, Tomo Kihara (JP), Daniel Coppen (GB)
Korallysis, 2022, Gilberto Esparza (MX)
Mapping Uncertain Landscape: The Satellite, 2023, Sofia Isupova (UA)
Maria CHOIR, 2023, Maria Arnal Dimas (ES)
METABOLICA, 2023, Thomas Feuerstein (AT)
P2P, 2023, Eva & Franco Mattes (IT, US)
SELF-CARE, 2022, Lyndsey Walsh (US)
The Waterworks of Money, 2022, Carlijn Kingma (NL)
VRJ Palestine, 2023, Nisreen Zahda (PS)
(from the press release)
Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria, 04 – 08.09.2024
images: (cover 1): Kate Crawford and Vladan Joler, «Calculating Empires», 2023, dettaglio (2) CERN header science gateway exploring the unknown (3) Semiconductor, «HALO», 2018. Installaiton view, Art Basel, Basel, 2018. Commissioned by Audemars Piguet and curated by Mónica Bello. Photo- Claudia Marcelloni. Courtesy CERN
