HASH Award 2020

On February 21, 2020, the international production prize HASH for net-based projects in the fields of art, technology, and design will be awarded for the second time at the ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe. Endowed with 8,000 euros, the prize was founded jointly by Akademie Schloss Solitude and ZKM and is sponsored by the Stiftung Landesbank Baden-Württemberg.

Based on the hash value from information technology, which is unique for each file and is used as a test value for data transmission, the HASH Award stands for project excellence. The prize will be awarded to one of the artists from the English-language online support programme Web Residencies for the years 2018/2019.

Conceived by invited curators, the Web Residencies’ open calls addressed questions such as: What can we learn from machines and how much do we depend on them in our lives and at work? How do new care technologies relate to the crisis in caring for the elderly and sick? With which technical innovations, hacks, or open-source strategies can we counter the causes and effects of climate change? What are today’s scientific or technological colonialisms? How could digital infrastructures that promote opinion-forming and political debate look? What role do mobile phones, actioncams, toy drones and social media live streaming play in war, terrorism, hunting, and other forms of subjective violence and their representation?

More than 1,200 artists, coders, designers, and scientists submitted project proposals for the six thematic calls of 2018/2019. Twenty-five of these ideas were awarded with Web Residencies, in which poetic, playful, as well as critical, political, or utopian works were realized.

On February 21, the curators and artists will come together to present the programs’ themes and questions to an interested public in talks, presentations, and performances.

The Web Residencies program is supported by the Ministry for Science, Research and the Arts of the State of Baden-Wuerttemberg. The prize money in the amount of 8,000 euros for the HASH is donated by the Foundation of the Landesbank Baden-Württemberg.

Admission free.

When: Friday, February 21, 2020, 3–10 pm
Where: ZKM | Media Theater