Ars Electronica Festival di Vuk Cosic e Geert Lovink
Ars Electronica has announced that a US $1,000 prize will be awarded on a one-time basis in 1998 for the best attempt to make current conflict potential in the Information Society (in)visible. openX presents the civilian info-weapons with the most firepower, as selected by an independent, international jury.
The Award
This year's Ars Electronica is dedicated to the topic of Infowar, and serious discussion in the eponimous mailing list was generated around the definition of such a concept, and around it's relevance for this predominantly art related festival.
After Geert Lovink has contemplated publically about a competition for an Information Weapon, an independent international jury was formed and a cash prize of US$ 1000 was assigned to this contest.
The Jury had a hard time deciding on what an Information Weapon might possibly be by itself, and also what it might mean in the context of such a festival. Even though the debate sometimes went into neat subtleties of bodycount and real life damage, it never went further then listing possible treats of such a weapon not striving for a definition.
The jury hopes that the awards are going to the right hands and that by that act a more public discussion will be induced around such concepts as Infowar and Infoweapon.
jury decisions
After considering all of the 50 submissions that were entered, and after doing intense research on it's own, the Jury has reached the following decision:
The information weapon award goes to Software & Systems International Limited, in Berkshire UK - the makers of FaceIt DB, the face recognition search engine, used in football stadium policing operations throughout Great Britain.
The Consolation Prize winner and the receiver of the cash prize is the people of Popotla, the fisherman village in Mexico for resisting unwanted technologies by means of trash and recycled materials.
jury members
· Vuk Cosic
(chair) - Ljubljana Digital Media Lab, Slovenia,
· Heath Bunting - Irational.org, UK,
· Natalie Jeremienko, Bureau if Inverse
· Technologies, USA,
· Zina Keye, Anti-Destination Society, Australia
· Marko Peljhan - Ljubljana Digital Media Lab, Slovenia,
· Rtmark, USA,
· Josephine Starrs - VNS Matrix,
the laureates
Software & Systems International Limited has created a unique tool that »?allows you to query and search large databases of facial photographs for matches with target images. ? With it's unique video surveillance capabilities it automatically captures and tracks all 'facial traffic' and can even be on the look out for individuals on your watch list.« In the opinion of the Jury, this Orwell's wet dream come true is surely the most impressive example of an information technology turning into a weapon system, and deserves highest marks for the damage it inflicts on the concept of public space.
To film the movie Titanic, Twentieth Century Fox built a movie maquiladora in Popotla, and surrounded it with a giant cement wall to keep the villagers out. ("Maquiladora" is the term for US factories operating in Mexico because of the low wages.) The people of Popotla, helped by the artists collective RevArte, reacted to the unsightly wall first in humiliation and anger, and then by covering it with a mural constructed from garbage they amassed and collected. The Ars Electronica InfoWeapon jury is rewarding Popotla for this remarkable low-tech gesture against an unpleasant high-tech situation.
further reading
· 'Surveillance
& The City' Dolan Cummings, Urban Research Group, Glasgow,
1997
· 'War In The Age Of Intelligent Machines',
Manuel De Landa, Swerve Editions, New York, 1991
· 'Pure' War, Paul Virilio, Autonomedia, New
York