[Air-l] Prix Ars Electronica - Digital Communities

[Denise Carter]

Dear All,

I am pleased to announce that I will be a member of the nominating jury
(doing a pre-selection of the entries) for a new category of the Prix Ars
Electronica prize competition.

The Ars Electronica Center and ORF Oberösterreich (Austrian Broadcasting
Company, Upper Austria Regional Studio) in Linz, Austria  the organizers
of Prix Ars Electronica, the world's most renowned and highest endowed
competition in the digital arts  are pleased to announce that a new
"non-artistic" category, Digital Communities, will be added to the Prix Ars
Electronica in 2004 to mark Ars Electronica's 25th anniversary.

This new category of the Prix Ars Electronica prize competition (that has
been showcasing the latest trends in art, technology and society since
1987) will be dedicated to these highly dynamic, leading edge social
phenomena. The social potential of digital and networked systems  defined
to include the wide-ranging effects of the Internet as well as of so-called
mobile space  encompasses a broad spectrum of phenomena, programs and
initiatives in which social innovation is taking place, as it were, in real
time. This is also the domain in which debates surrounding the issues that
will have a major impact on our futurefor example, the establishment of
technological standards, the treatment accorded to intellectual property,
and conflict at the point where the right to privacy meets the necessity of
surveillanceare launched and carried out. Discussions surrounding the
creative commons and peer-to-peer computing, phenomena like collective
blogging on the Internet or flash mobs that form spontaneously via mobile
communication are among the latest developments; others include new forms
of online collaboration in learning, gaming and fan communities, digital
neighborhoods, and citizen consensus conferences.

This new Prix Ars Electronica category is designed to recognize the
initiators and propagators of these communities, the persons whose work
deals with these thematic domains, as well as the developers of the
relevant technologies and the theoreticians who identify these emerging
phenomena and help the public come to terms with them.

The prizes in the Digital Communities category will total 40,000 Euros for
two Golden Nicas and four Awards of Distinction.

Submissions deadline is March 12, 2004.

The Nominating Jury of this new category will be held in Linz, Austria from
April 16 - 18, 2004.

A week after the Nominating Jury the Awarding Jury will make the final
selection.

The two Golden Nicas and the Awards of Distinction in the "Digital
Communities " category will be presented at a special ceremony,hosted
jointly by Ars Electronica and SAP,held in New York in June 2004.The winners
of the Golden Nicas and the Awards of Distinction commit to accepting their
prizes at the "Digital Communities " Gala in June 2004 in person (or through
a proxy nominated in advance)and to present their project at the Prix Ars
Electronica Forum in September 2004 in Linz, Austria.


The "Digital Communities" category is open to political, social, and
cultural projects, initiatives, groups, and scenes from all over the world
utilizing digital technology to better society and assume social
responsibility. It is meant to recognize the initiators and propagators of
these communities as well as the developers of the relevant technologies,
and to honor those whose work contributes to the establishment and
proliferation of Digital Communities as well as provide understanding and
research into them.
Two Golden Nicas will be awarded in order to recognize the vast array of
relevant projects between grassroots operations and professional solutions,
the diversity of approaches and aspects from community innovation to social
software excellence as well as the broad spectrum of submitters involved,
ranging from private initiatives to public institutions.
Particular emphasis will be placed on a project's "community innovation,"
its sustainability, and its appropriate use of technology optimized for the
end user. This could be a novel method for connecting already existing
technology or optimizing the use of an available infrastructure.
Jury members will be looking to recognize technological-social solutions,
"social software tools," and infrastructure with great promise, as well as
the brilliant realization of such concepts. Their evaluations and decisions
will honor visionary and forward-looking projects; those that display
consummate social and technological innovativeness and have been implemented
with tremendous success. In their selection, the jury will place particular
emphasis on the reasonableness, appropriateness, and openness of the
solutions. Digital Communities projects should enable human beings to enjoy
the widest possible access to technology, networks, and the "Digital
Commons." The winning projects should be able to serve as a model to be
copied by others, and, in their orientation on the future, be a source of
inspiration, encouragement, and enablement.

Among the projects, phenomena and fields of activity
subsumed under the heading Digital Communities are:

. social software
. eDemocracy, eGovernment, eGovernance
. emergent democracy
. collective weblogs, social networking systems
. filtering and reputation systems
. social self-support groups
. learning and knowledge communities
. computer supported collaborative processes
. gaming communities
. digital neighborhoods, community networks
. free net initiatives, wireless LAN projects
. digital cities, urban development projects
. citizen involvement initiatives, citizen conferences
. telecenters


For further information see Ars Electronica at
http://www.aec.at/en/index.asp , but please contact me direct for further
details and application procedure as I have been asked to suggest
nominations.


Denise M. Carter

Lecturer,
Sociology and Anthropology,
University of Hull,
Hull.
HU6 7RX

Tel: 01482 465024