Solitude and ZKM create international Net Art award HASH

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The Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, and the ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, have jointly established the international Net Art award Hash for net-based projects in the fields of art, technology, and design. The first award ceremony will take place on February 15, 2018, within the framework of a public networking event with short talks and presentations at the ZKM | Karlsruhe.

Hash is a 8,000-euro prize donated by the Foundation of the Landesbank Baden-Württemberg. An independent juror will select the best 2016/2017 web resident from the English-language Web Residencies program.

Web Residencies
The Web Residencies program awards four-week web fellowships to young talents from the international Net Art scene, as well as to artists of all disciplines who deal with net-based practices. Initiated in 2016 by Akademie Schloss Solitude and organized and implemented with the ZKM | Karlsruhe since 2017, program is dedicated to artists, designers, programmers, researchers, and activists who use the Internet as a place of production in an innovative way. Within art’s liberated space, the participants negotiate digital topics, »trends,« and tools, question or develop them further, and respond to the rapid developments of technology and Internet with artistic, critical, and progressive positions. 

Web Residencies: The Stats
Over 20 months,19 projects by participants from eight European countries as well as the US, Canada, and UK were supported and realized online. With each open call, a new digital spectrum and network opened up with knowledge and ideas that were visualized and communicated through the program. The invited curators designed calls connecting to current discourses in the fields of net culture, net-based art, as well as digital technology and society. Among the issues were: How can Net Art be decentralized? Can artists be whistleblowers? Which new opportunities arise from Virtual Reality? The web residents, which were selected from 100 to 150 applications, experimented with Twitter bots, digital painting software, generative music, or data visualization. They developed technologies that outwit mobile phone tracking services, analysis software with which Facebook users can evaluate their own data, or new formats for online art galleries in the darknet. Thus, a unique international network and online archive of different digital disciplines came to life and continuously expands. Meanwhile, thousands of people see and share the calls via online media and social networks.

New Call
The current call for web residencies, An AI Summer, curated by the designer and net curator Nora O Murchú, focuses on artificial intelligence. Applicants can submit concepts by October 20, 2017, at this link http://webresidencies-solitude-zkm.com/. The four-week Web Residencies take place in November 2017. Winners are also eligible for the Hash award.

At the award ceremony and networking event, all interested people are invited to exchange ideas on topics and projects with curators, artists, and program supporters.

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 first Hash prize in 2018 is donated by the Foundation of the Landesbank Baden-Württemberg.

See the projects on these websites:
https://schloss-post.com/overview/web-residencies/ and http://web-residencies.zkm.de/

Press Contact:

Solitude:

Angela Butterstein, Coordinator for Press and PR
Tel. +49 (0)711-99619 471, ab@akademie-solitude.de

Clara Herrmann, Coordinator for the Digital Solitude Program
​Tel. +49 (0)711-99619 478, ch@akademie-solitude.de

ZKM:

Regina Hock, Coordinator for Press and PR
Tel. +49 (0)721-8100 1821, regina.hock@zkm.de