With the Live 2011 Grand Prix media art competition, European Capital of Culture Turku challenged top artists and new emerging talents from all over the world to deliver media art and novel media applications. Altogether, over 300 entries were submitted in eight categories. International expert juries awarded prizes to 13 competition entries and 10 entries were highly commended. The key criteria used by the juries in selecting the winners were innovativeness, quality of work, originality and aesthetics.

Mini-Festival’s timetable and programme

Jedi and amiraali Ackbar

Media culture for many tastes

Star Wars: Uncut took over Logomo

Based on American Casey Pugh’s idea and realised by fans, the Star Wars: Uncut film was shown in Turku on 8 October. In addition to the film, the day’s programme at Logomo included other winning entries from the Live 2011 Grand Prix media art competition. The evening concluded with performances by the bands Desert Planet and X-Rust.

Last year, technology guru Casey Pugh won the Participative Media category of the Turku 2011 Foundation’s media art competition. In the Star Wars: Uncut (SWU) project, Pugh cut the first Star Wars episode, Star Wars: A New Hope (1977), into 15-second segments, which Star Wars fans then used to re-create the film by utilising animation, home videos and parody.

The SWU project was the first exclusively online production to receive the Emmy Award for Creative Achievement in Interactive Media in August 2010. The project is an outstanding example of crowd-sourcing and utilisation of the creativity of the online community, as the fans had a unique opportunity to contribute to the production of the film.

Media culture for many tastes

In addition to the Star Wars: Uncut film, particular emphasis was placed at Logomo on works that achieved success in the Live GP’s Open category: music videos, demo art, installations and animation.

The works presented at Logomo were entertaining, high-quality pieces. Worth a special mention was RIP – A Remix Manifesto, a documentary directed by Brett Gaylor, which has also been honoured at several film festivals. RIP – A Remix Manifesto explores the clash between intellectual property rights and the mash-up culture in the era of peer-to-peer file sharing. The documentary was shown on TV on the YLE Teema channel some eighteen months ago.

In the Logomo lobby, the audience could test the best entries in the media art competition’s Artistic Game category. Entries in this category were required to be browser-based games with novel content and a fresh user interface.

Before the screening of the film, there was a public discussion featuring Jarmo Puskala, one of the scriptwriters of Star Wreck, a film showcasing the skills of Finnish sci-fi fans.

The day concluded with music. The headlining band of the evening, Desert Planet, is known for its electronic music influenced by 8-bit video games, coin-op games and science fiction films. X-Rust from Turku took care of the jamming for the rest of the evening.

In honour of fan culture, the audience outfits were rewarded.