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Vida 9.0 Eighth Art & Artificial Life International Competition

More information:
http://www.telefonica.es/vida

Fundación Telefónica launches the eighth LIFE 9.0 international awards, the purpose of which is to acknowledge excellence in artistic creation carried out in the field of “artificial life” and associated disciplines.

The event is addressed at all artistic projects that explore the interaction between “synthetic” and “organic” life, and innovative projects that develop the field of Artificial Life. In previous years, award-winning projects have included robots, electronic avatars, chaotic algorithms, knowbots, cellular automata, computer viruses and virtual ecologies that evolved with the interaction of the participant. Applicants can view all these winning projects from previous years at the Internet portal of LIFE, at http://www.telefonica.es/vida.

The themes on which the contents of this year’s awards have been organized are, among others: autonomous agents that give form to and interpret our environment saturated with data, various artefacts (robots, Artificial Intelligence agents, wetware, etc., that question pre-existing notions of what is “human”, “natural” and what it means to be alive), how to create empathy between artificial entities and human beings, anthropomorphization of cyberspace and its inhabitants, and how interactive systems can be designed to arouse interest in the emerging field of “artificial life.”, etc.

The competition is open to participants from all round the world and each of them may only present one project completed after September 2004 which will consist of a video with the project in which the images will be accompanied by an audio narration explaining the artistic concept and the technological execution of the project, plus a transcript of this explanation. They must also attach a brief biography (150-200 words), a description of the concept and the technique of the project and between one and three images (slides, photos or high quality CD or Internet digitalizations). The language used may be Spanish or English and the total duration of the video may be between 5 and 10 minutes.

To register, candidates should follow the rules for submission, complete and sign the application form on http://www.telefonica.es/vida and send it with the tape or DVD before 16th October 2006, to any of the sites of the Fundación Telefónica in Spain (Madrid) or Latin America (Mexico D.F., Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires, Santiago de Chile and Lima), the addresses of which can be found at the end of the announcement on http://www.telefonica.es/vida

The works submitted will be examined by an international panel of judges that will meet in Madrid as of 2nd November 2006: Sally Jane Norman, France/New Zealand; Jonah Brucker-Cohen, USA; Mónica Bello Bugallo, Spain; Daniel Canogar, Spain; José-Carlos Mariátegui, Peru; and Nell Tenhaaf, Canada.

A total of 20,000 euros will be awarded for the three projects selected by the judges: First Prize, 10,000 euros; Second Prize, 7,000 euros; and Third Prize, 3,000 euros. The prize-winning projects will have the possibility of being displayed at exhibitions organized by Fundación Telefónica or in which it participates.

Incentive to Iberoamerican productions
The second category of the competition fosters the production of pieces using Artificial Life techniques and associated disciplines, in the Iberoamerican field. With prize money of 20,000 euros, this category will award between one and three proposals that show a relevant concept, a proven quality in earlier works and a clear capacity of the artist to produce the piece. This prize is conceived as an incentive to production, not as a subsidy to cover the total expenses of a project, and therefore the participant’s ability to achieve technical, economic and logistical infrastructure to do the piece will be valued. Each project must be described in a text not exceeding 2,000 words and which must include details of the concepts and techniques planned to develop the piece. The competition is open to participants from all of Iberoamerica, Spain and Portugal and proposals may be sent in Spanish, Portuguese or English. Each participant, however, may only submit one work.

This was posted on e-flux.