11th CYFEST – Partners

The Lumen Prize, the global award and tour for digital art, is pleased to present six works from the 2017, 2016 and 2014 Editions of the prize at CYFEST. With awards that honour works ranging from augmented reality apps to moving image and virtual reality playgrounds as well as robotic installations, the Lumen Prize recognizes excellence across the field of digital art.

A response to today’s political and environmental climate, Francois-Xavier de Costerd’s work, shortlisted for the 2017 Lumen Prize Moving Image Award, ‘‘Maybe We’ll Have Another Chance’’ takes a simple green alpine valley and turns into a theater of threats. A storm of digital flakes made of satellite views of Las Vegas, Boston, New York, London and Paris engulfs the valley. The abyss the world faces is reflected in the shell of our planet splintering into oblivion. The title’s double meaning echoes our slim chance of fixing this crisis.

‘‘Black Moves’’ by Carla Chan, shortlisted for the 2016 Lumen Prize Moving Image Award, is a spatial drama and a virtual landscape that simulates the forming and deforming of an amorphous black mass. A response to Chan’s obsession with natural transformations and formless shapes, ‘‘Black Moves’’ reveals the power of natural substances.

In Fabio Giampietro’s ‘‘Hyperplanes of Simultaneity’’, winner of the 2016 Lumen Prize Gold Award, the audience is welcomed into a virtual metropolis, almost entirely barren of human life. Inspired by block universe theory, where the past and present exist but the future does not, ‘‘Hyperplanes’’ provides a vertiginous glance into the mind of the painter through a virtual reality headset.

While ‘‘Hyperplanes’’ uses digital technology to allow the audience to look back and access the traditional painted canvas, the British art collective Universal Everything’s ‘‘Screens of the Future’’ looks to the future and our increasingly dependent relationship with technology. Longlisted for the 2017 Moving Image Award, this work serves as a product demo  of our near future, using 22 short films to offer visionary prototypes based on emerging technologies.

A collaboration between Nicole Ruggiero, Molly Soda of the US and Refrakt of Germany, ‘‘Slide to Expose’’ is an augmented reality installation that explores the interpersonal depths of digital intimacy, privacy, life/death, and the new perceptions that these concepts endure through societies obsession with technology. Awarded the 2017 Lumen Prize Founder’s Award, the work recreates the bedroom of a teenage girl and unveils hidden objects through the use of the visitors’ smartphone. Similarly, ‘‘On Loop’’ by Christine Hooper, 2014 Lumen Prize Animate Award, examines life from inside a young woman’s bedroom using clever animation techniques and comedy to great effect.

Founded in 2012, the Lumen Prize celebrates the very best digital art created by artists around the world. Based in the UK, Lumen’s goal is to focus the world’s attention on this exciting genre in all its forms through a competition and global tour of artworks which are selected from an open call. Since its first show in London in 2013, Lumen has staged over 35 exhibitions across 10 countries and has awarded more than US$50,000 in prize money.

List of the works

François-Xavier de Costerd (USA)
Maybe We’ll Have Another Chance
2017 Lumen Prize Shortlist (Moving Image)

Carla Chan (Germany-China)
Black Moves
2016 Lumen Prize Shortlist (Moving Image)

Fabio Giampietro (Italy)
Hyperplanes of Simultaneity
2016 Lumen Prize Gold Award

Universal Everything (UK)
Screens of the Future
2017 Lumen Prize Longlist (Moving Image)

Nicole Ruggiero, Molly Soda (USA), Refrakt (Germany)
Slide to Expose
2017 Lumen Prize Founder’s Award

Christine Hooper (UK)
On Loop
2014 Lumen Prize Animate Award

Danielle Siembieda
Director of the International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology Leonardo (Leonardo/ISAST)

The International Society for Arts, Sciences and Technology Leonardo (Leonardo/ISAST) serves a global network of distinguished scholars, artists, scientists, researchers and thinkers through our programs focused on interdisciplinary innovation in the arts, sciences and technology. From our beginnings in 1968, we have served as THE virtual community for purposes of networking, resource-sharing, best practices, research, documentation and events in art, science and technology.

Half a century ago, kinetic artist and astronautical pioneer Frank Malina set out to solve the needs of a community of artists and scientists working across disciplines by using the “new media” of the time: offset print publishing. As a groundbreaking, innovative venture, Leonardo represented a unique vision: to serve as an international channel of communication among artists, with emphasis on the writings of artists who use science and developing  technologies in their work. The result was Leonardo, an academic journal for artists with the peer-review rigor of a scientific journal. For 50 years, Leonardo has been the definitive publication for artist-academics, and the field has gained momentum in recent years.

Today, documenting and capturing the creative innovators and provocateurs of culture is not enough. Leonardo must expand its scope to represent the unique works and challenges we face in the 21st century. To fully realize its purpose and place over the next 50 years, we are opening our doors to a year and a half of community feedback for us to design our programs and mission to meet the needs of our audience. Leonardo is reaching out to pioneers, institutions, thought leaders and the curious to nurture the exploding art/science/technology global community. As a network of networks, Leonardo is reimagining its future, with our community at the forefront. We invite CYFEST to come along with us on this journey of rediscovery and reinvention. Why? Because the ideas that lead to critical breakthroughs can come from any direction.