The Prix Ars Electronica is one of the most important yearly prizes in the field of electronic and interactive art, computer animation, digital culture and music. Prix Ars Electronica 2016 is now staring the Open Call!

The categories in 2016 are Computer Animation/Film/VFX, Interactive Art +, and Digital Communities. The u19 – CREATE YOUR WORLD category is for youngsters under age 19 in Austria. The Prix Ars Electronica is the world’s most time-honored media arts competition. Winners are awarded the coveted Golden Nica statuette, prize money ranging up to € 10,000 per category and an opportunity to showcase their talents at the famed Ars Electronica Festival in Linz.

On behalf of the European Commission, Ars Electronica hereby issues an open call for entries to a competition that will determine the first recipients of STARTS, prestigious and—with two €20,000 grants—highly endowed awards. Expressly encouraged are innovative projects at the interface of science, technology and art.

Projects submitted to a Prix Ars Electronica category can also be considered for the STARTS Prize!

The Sergey Kuryokhin Center for Modern Art and the Sergey Kuryokhin Foundation announce the annual independent Contemporary Art Award.

The independent Sergey Kuryokhin Contemporary Art Award was instituted in 2009 and is one of  the most significant cultural events in Russia as well as worldwide.  Sergey Kuryokhin Award is linked to one of the most prominent characters of the late­twentieth- century St. Petersburg, a brilliant composer and pianist, founder of a recording company, head of  the «Popular Mechanics» orchestra.

Many of the CYLAND artists and collaborators, including Elena Gubanova and Ivan Govorkov, Petr Belyi, Katya Bochavar among others, had been nominated and won the Contemporary Art Award in the previous years.

One of the targets of Sergey Kuryokhin Award is to find and support promising artists, curators  and musicians, to raise the status of contemporary art and to integrate it in the international cultural  life. Sergey Kuryokhin Award is specifically focused on the principles of the «Popular  Mechanics»: provocation, performance, improvisation and unexpectedness. Sergey Kuryokhin  Award commemorates the synthesis of various forms of art, the search for new meanings and the  revolutionary courage – the only kind that can change the world.

The deadline for applications for Sergey Kuryokhin Contemporary Art Award 2015 till the 1st of March 2016. All the details can be found at http://kuryokhin.net/

The Art + Technology Lab at LACMA has released a new call for artist proposals. The reponse from artists and art collectives all over the world throughout the first two years of the program has been amazing, allowing LACMA to share an ongoing array of works in progress and artist talks with our public, as the artists who receive grants through the program work alongside museum’s technical advisors to accomplish ever-evolving experimental works of art.

The purpose of the Art + Technology Lab is to nurture new work with financial and in-kind support for projects that engage emerging technology and contribute to public dialogue about technology and culture. In addition to the grant, the artists gain advice and in-kind support from the museum and its advisors from Hyundai, Accenture, NVIDIA, DAQRI, SpaceX, Google, Gensler, and independent artists and academics.

Applications are due February 24, 2016 by 11:59 p.m. All proposals must be submitted via the online portal. Questions about the program or the application process may be directed to lab@lacma.org.

Resonate festival in Belgrade is back for another year bringing artists together to drive a forward-looking debate on the position of technology in art and culture. ‘Early Bird’ tickets are now on sale. Hurry up and get yours!

The fifth edition of Resonate festival is taking place in Belgrade between 12th – 16th April 2016.

Resonate Conference (14th-16th April) offers eight 1-Day Workshops (free to ticket holders – per application), four 3-Day Workshops (11th – 13th April), over 20 lectures, more than 10 Project Talks (Q&A), Panel Discussions, Screenings and access to our closing party with A/V performances and DJs.

Resonate Live (12th-16th April) features 15+ Music Performances, 10+ Lectures, 3+ Workshops (free to ticket holders – per application) and Panel Discussions + access to our closing party.

Confirmed Conference Participants for 2016 include:
Nicholas Felton, Moment Factory, Chris Sugrue, Jürg Lehni, Alex Evans (Media Molecule), Romain Tardy, Atau Tanaka, Theo Watson, Daniel Hirschmann, Phoenix Perry, Rebecca Fiebrink, Artists & Engineers, Ishac Bertran, Bethany Koby (Technology Will Save Us), Darran Anderson, Andreas Müller, Karsten Schmidt, Neil Mendoza, Darsha Hewitt, Jonathan Wohl, Random Studio, Pe Lang, James Auger, Shane Walter, onedotzero, Jakob Bak (CIID), Dennis P Paul (HfK), Joreg (vvvv), Cathrine Kramer, Domestic Data Streamers, Playmodes and many more.

Tickets On Sale Now – Hurry up and get your Early-Bird. Limited available: resonate.io/2016/tickets

On 9 December 2015, the exhibition Mechanical Curiosities. Musical, Clockwork, Animated Mechanisms from the 17th–19th Centuries in the State Hermitage Collection opened in the Blue Bedchamber of the Winter Palace, the State Hermitage Museum.

The display features devices with a whole variety of purposes – timepieces and musical mechanisms, unique pieces of furniture with secrets and examples of the jeweller’s art. Created in Western Europe and Russia in the 17th–19th centuries, they reflect not only the level of technical progress in their time, but also fashionable pastimes, the ambitions and imagination of those who commissioned and created them.

The exhibition presents works by Western European and Russian practitioners of decorative and applied art, including masterpieces by celebrated mechanics of the past – James Cox (1723–1800), Pierre Jaquet Droz (1721–1790), David Roentgen (1743–1807). Peter Kinzing (1745–1816) and Ivan Petrovich Kulibin (1735–1818) – as well as pieces whose creators are unknown. Many of the items are being displayed publicly for the first time.

The earliest examples of mechanical devices included in the exhibition date from the 17th century. They are German table clocks in the form of animals and a silver toy carriage made by mechanics in Augsburg and Nuremberg.
Craftsmen of the 18th-century age of the Rococo and Enlightenment produced marvels of mechanical art, demonstrating the triumph of reason over the organic world. One of the most famous gems of that time is the Peacock Clock on display in the Pavilion Hall of the Small Hermitage. It was the work of the English 18th-century jeweller and mechanic James Cox. The exhibition features table clocks and pocket watches made by Cox and his compatriot Peter Torckler.

Mechanical Curiosities: Musical, Clockwork, Animated Mechanisms from the 17th – 19th Centuries open from December 10, 2015 until April 3, 2016. Visit the exhibition at the Blue Bedroom (Room 307), the Winter Palace, the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia.