Over 300 entries from all over the world were submitted

Innovative results of media competition by European Capital of Culture Turku announced

The Live Grand Prix media competition attracted contestants ranging from top experts to rising talents from all over the world to participate in eight competition categories. A total of 105,600 euros will be awarded to winners and for creating the works selected by international juries. The Live Grand Prix winners will be announced at the Alternative Party, Helsinki, on 23 October 2010.

The Turku Capital of Culture year offering includes a wealth of digital culture. With the Live 2011 Grand Prix media art competition, Turku, the European Capital of Culture for 2011, challenged top artists and new emerging talents from all over the world to deliver media art and novel media applications.

The competition was launched in February 2009 with eight competition categories, including free expression, interactive works and games. Altogether, over 300 entries from all over the world were submitted before the competition deadline closed in July 2010. International expert juries awarded 13 competition entries and gave honourable mentions to 10 entries.

The competition resulted in a selection of innovative and insightful works that will be extensively showcased during 2011 in urban spaces, at various exhibitions and media events and online at www.turku2011.fi/en/livegrandprix_en. The works will be presented for the first time at the Creative Buzz Seminar to be held in Turku on 28 October 2010.

The competition winners will be announced at the Alternative Party in Helsinki. The most reputable Live Grand Prix winner, Emmy-awarded Casey Pugh, will attend the event to address the audience on Saturday 23 October at 8:30 pm.

Live Grand Prix winners

The juries used the following criteria to select the winners: innovativeness, quality of the work, originality and aesthetics.

The Open category featured a free theme for audiovisual experiences.

Shared 1st prize 14,000 euros:

• Rimas Sakalauskas (Lithuania): Synchronisation – The video installation combines rare everyday realism with dreamy visions, resulting in an imaginative and fascinating visual story.
• Ulu Braun (Germany): Westcoast – The video collage introduces a unique interpretation of our world. The collage opens possibilities for a variety of different interpretations.
• 3rd prize 2,500 euros, Brett Gaylor (Canada): RIP A Remix Manifesto – A documentary film regarding copyrights in the digital era.
• Honorary mention for an emerging creative talent 1,000 euros, Sampo Siren (Finland): Empty Kitchen – The jury wanted to support and motivate a young artist who created an interesting experimental audiovisual work that creatively modifies physical space through digital means.

In the Participative Media category, the entries had to challenge the audiences to actively interact with the audiovisual works. The competition entries were asked to diversely utilise various methods, channels, terminals or media for interactivity.

The jury decided to split the first prize 16,000 euros also in this category. The first prize was awarded to two stand-out works that take different approaches to the possibilities of social media.

• Michelle Teran (Spain): Buscando al Sr. Goodbar – Like an ethnographer, Teran tracks down YouTube users who have filmed their own lives and their environment in Murcia, Spain.
  
  The work results in a bus trip during which the artist and the YouTube contributors visit the original filming sites and meet people featured in the videos. During the trip, the artist acts as a Google Earth video jockey, presenting videos filmed in locations along the bus route. The work beautifully intertwines local areas with the global network.
  
  
• Casey Pugh (USA): Star Wars: Uncut – The project is a first-class demonstration of the possibilities of crowdsourcing. Pugh cut the first Star Wars episode, Star Wars: A New Hope (1977), into 437 separate 15-second segments. Star Wars fans then used the segments to re-create the film by utilising animation, home videos and parody.
  
  Several alternative versions were created for each 15-second segment. The Star Wars: Uncut website uses an online voting system to select the favourite segment submissions, which will then be used to recreate the full film. Based on the voting, the online film constantly changes. The project also attracted Finnish contributors.
  
  The project was awarded an Emmy for Creative Achievement in Interactive Media in Los Angeles in August 2010.

The Digital Turku category sought experimental, alternative and creative audiovisual interpretations on urban space.

1. prize 15,000 euros, Evan Roth (USA): Graffiti Analysis – An open-source application based on new tools and new creative points of view. According to the jury, the winning entry combines technological innovation with social practices and challenges the sets of values of different age groups.
2. prize 8,000 euros, Stanza (UK): Capacities – Data streams in the city become digital cityscapes. The “user interface”created by Stanza provides us with a novel way to see and understand the city we live in.
3. prize 7,000 euros, Florian Tuercke (Germany): Urban Audio – A public art project that turns the city soundscape into a living composition and a continuously expanding database, all in the spirit of John Cage. The artist uses a van as a mobile laboratory and a listening station. As the van moves around, it gives the locals the possibility to hear their surroundings anew.

The works will be presented in Turku during 2011.

The Culture 2.0 category sought for social media applications that utilise Web 2.0 features to create novel, entertaining and viral artistic and cultural experiences.

The jury awarded two web applications that utilise the key strengths of social media: communities and viral distribution. Two start-up companies were both awarded 4,000 euros to support the creation of 2.0 services. The remainder of the prize money was not awarded as the jury was not satisfied with the quality of the entries.

• SmallRivers (Switzerland): Paper.li – An online magazine for the future that utilises a familiar newspaper-like user interface to display news and links shared by the user’s social network. In the USA, the online service has become one of the 2,000 most frequently used online services in just a few months.
  
  
• Bambuser (Sweden/Finland): Mobile Live Video Mixer – The entry will democratise multi-camera productions by allowing video feeds from several cell phones to be combined together as a live online broadcast or for embedding the video as part of a website, such as a blog or Facebook.

Artistic game category entries were required to be browser-based games with novel content and a fresh user interface.

1. prize 5,000 euros, Team Catnapped (Denmark): Catnapped – The game has a great storyline and the application is visually very appealing. The jury praised the 3D views as personal and well-implemented.
2. prize 1,500 euros, LIA (Germany): IsaidlF – An audiovisually intriguing application with an innovative user interface and a unique, personal look.

Last year, the national student award was given to Niklas Gustafsson from the Aalto University School of Art and Design for his work The Third Eye. Respectively, the Creative Idea for Mobile City Guide award was given to the Local Buddy application from Tampere in November 2009.

In addition, the Live Grand Prix competition has worked in cooperation with various media art events, such as Transmediale, the European Media Art Festival, FutureEverything, Assembly Summer and Alternative Party, by awarding Event Awards during the respective events in 2009–2011.

Detailed descriptions for the winning entries and the honorary mentions by the juries are available at the Turku Capital of Culture website www.turku2011.fi/en/livegrandprix_en.
                                                                        
Members of the expert juries:

• Aneta Krzemien Barkley, researcher and curator at the FACT Foundation in Liverpool, focusing on art and creative technology
• Laura Beloff, media artist
• Andy Best, media artist and researcher
• Drew Hemment, Director of the FutureEverything Festival
• Koopee Hiltunen, Director of Neogames, Finnish Centre of Game Business, Research and Education
• Erkki Huhtamo, Professor at UCLA  
• Jari Jaanto, Director of Business Development at Sulake Dynamoid
• Sonja Kangas, researcher, game designer, Head of GameLab at Paf
• Teemu Leinonen, Aalto University, Professor at Medialab
• Tony Manninen, CEO at Ludocraft Oy
• Domenico Quaranta, art critic and curator
• Anne Roquigny, media art curator
• Alfred Rotert, Director of the European Media Art Festival
• Jarmo Röksä, Project Manager at the Turku 2011 Foundation
• Minna Tarkka, media researcher and producer, Executive Director of the m-cult Association

Additional information

• Project Manager Jarmo Röksä, Turku 2011 Foundation, tel. +358 44 907 5873, jarmo.roksa(a)turku2011.fi
• Communications Manager Saara Malila, Turku 2011 Foundation, tel. +358 44 907 5710, saara.malila(a)turku2011.fi