Newsletter: transmediale Awards 2009

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Newsletter 03 12 2008 transmediale.09 DEEP NORTH 28 01 - 01 02 2009 House of World Cultures Berlin, John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10 transmediale Awards 2009

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1. transmediale Award 2009 2. Nominees for the transmediale Award 2009 3. Vilem Flusser Theory Award 2009

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1. transmediale Award 2009 905 artistic works from 53 countries responding to transmediale’s DEEP NORTH call were submitted for the festival’s award competitions. The deliberations of the international jury composed of Annick Bureaud (Paris), Bronac Ferran (London), Juha Huuskonen (Helsinki), Pooja Sood (New Delhi), and Christoph Tannert (Berlin) ended with the selection of eight works being nominated for the transmediale Award 2009. For the second year in a row artistic works submitted for the club transmediale (CTM) have also been taken into consideration by the jury for the prize, which is endowed with a total of 8,000 euros. The nominees list reflects the broad creative, diverse and conceptual range of the submissions, artistic excellence and strength of expression being primary criteria for the jury. The prize winners will be announced at the Award ceremony on January 31, 2009 in House of World Cultures.

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2. Nominees for the transmediale Award 2009 Perry Bard (ca/us) – Man with a Movie Camera: The Global Remake (2008) In this global participatory work, people are invited to upload shots and images interpreting the original script of Vertov’s masterpiece and upload them to this site. Software developed for the project archives, sequences and streams the submissions creating a worldwide montage, in Vertov’s terms ‘decoding of life as it is”. http://dziga.perrybard.net/ Ewen Chardronnet and Bureau d’etudes (fr) – The Laboratory Planet (2008) Chardronnet with a team of artistic researchers and activists produces the ‘Laboratory Planet’ as a journalistic multimedia piece: the thematic tabloid and its online platform discuss the geostrategic, tactical media and speculative issues lurking behind the ambiguous headlines of the mainstream press. http://laboratoryplanet.org/ Petko Dourmana (bg) – Post Global Warming Survival Kit (2008) The multi media installation, featuring a two-channel infrared projection of the North Sea visible only with high-tech equipment, such as night-vision goggles, is set within a virtual post-apocalyptic landscape akin to that of a possible ‘nuclear winter’. Graham Harwood, Richard Wright, Matsuko Yokokoji (uk) – Tantalum Memorial (2008) This telephone ‘exchange” installation is a memorial to the people who have died in the wars in Congo over the metal tantalum, which is used in cell phone components and has become more valuable than gold. The work also references a ‘social telephony’ network used by the Congelese diaspora to remain anonymous and avoid state censorship.

http://tantalumexploration.net/pages/memorialpagetwo.php Hiroshi Matoba (jp) – Overbug (2008) ‘Overbug” is a performance tool designed to compose Minimal, Dance and Pop Music. Through looping and newly arranging sound patterns, called ‘Bugsounds”, the programme creates complex, polyrhythmic sounds. Michiko Nitta (uk) – Extreme Green Guerillas (2007) Nitta’s project takes current green trends to the extreme: The ‘Extreme Green Guerillas’ are a network of amateur self-sustaining people who have shortened their lifespan to the ultimate green lifestyle, e.g. rejecting the usage of the Internet or mobile phones as this will tie them to big corporations.

http://www.myportfolio.me.uk/EGGs.htm Rudolfo Quintas (pt) – Burning The Sound (2008) The interactive sound performance is about the nature of rituals, power and control. It uses fire from a regular lighter to subvert patterns of rhythm, thus using technological mediated computer sound to exorcise the sound as a spiritual strategy. http://www.swap-project.com/ Reynold Reynolds (us/de) – Six Apartments (2007) The two screen video projection loop shows six isolated occupants of six different apartments living their lives unaware of each other, accompanied the by very same sound track from radio and television news. A poetic document of decline and deterioration in times of dramatic change. http://www.reynold-reynolds.com/six/index.htm

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3. Vilem Flusser Theory Award 2009 The publicist and networker Brian Holmes and the activist and author of free software Denis Rojo (aka Jaromil) are this year’s nominees for the Vilem Flusser Theory Award. Worth 2,000 euros, the prize is awarded together with the _Vilem _Flusser _Archiv at Berlin’s Universität der Künste and honours outstanding theoretical or research-based practice. The prize will be awarded together with the transmediale Award 2009 on 31 January, 2009.

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transmediale.09 DEEP NORTH festival for art and digital culture berlin http://www.transmediale.de info@transmediale.de

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