Making IT good for society is not just about social media pile–ons, algorithmic unfairness and wild assertions on when self–driving cars will be a reality. For the past five years BCS have been sponsoring a section of the Lumen Arts award. Brian Runciman MBCS reports.
BCS has been involved in computer arts since the 1960s – covering fascinating developments in ITNOW’s predecessor The Computer Bulletin and keeping members informed through the activities of the Computer Arts Society.
Originally, BCS sponsored the Lumen AI Award – but AI is a methodology that by far the majority of computer artists are now employing – making it too broad a category. So, what we now call the BCS Immersive Environment Award offers a $1,000 prize for an immersive experience using any digital processes including but not limited to performance, XR, virtual worlds, projection, theatre projects.
As with the previous AI Award, the submitted works have a strong societal angle – raising issues that BCS are already trying to address, but from the creative perspective. The four shortlisted works demonstrate the vibrancy of the space.
Diagnosia
This work by Mengtai Zhang and Lemon Guo explores the potential of VR as a tool for transplanting secondhand memories. Diagnosia aims to connect the audience to social issues via sensorial immersion and embodiment in the memories of people who experienced them firsthand.
The piece portrays Mengtai’s memories of being incarcerated in a military–operated Internet addiction camp in Beijing in 2007, where internet addiction and other youth issues were treated as a severe mental disorder.
The aim is to raise questions about the extensive research that has come out of this institution, and how they malign scientific literature on ‘internet addiction’ on a global scale. By tracing the lineage of internet addiction in China’s cultural context, the work discusses how societies can create an issue and then use it as a tool for social control.
Diagnosia by Mengtai Zhang and Lemon Guo click the image to enlarge
Crystal Seeding
Crystal Seeding by Ting–Tong Chang is a collaborative project with Taisugar’s Huwei Sugar Factory. With sugar being the inspirational departure point, the project encompasses Taiwanese puppet theatre, experimental music, 3D printing, and robotics, whose intertwined complexity forms the history of a small town in Taiwan.
The multi–channel video installation tells a narrative adapted from Japanese influenced puppet theatre piece Kurama Tengu performed with the Sheng Ping Puppet Troupe. Through merging reality and fiction, the project illustrates the history of Huwei Township. Moreover, the recorded performance of composer HUI Tak–Cheung in the sugar factory, interspersed in the video, turns the factory into a site–specific musical instrument.
Crystal Seeding by Ting–Tong Chang click the image to enlarge
The Border Project
Julio Obscura’s Fronterizo is a VR experience co–created with a border community and inspired by the artist's childhood experience of living on the US Mexico border.
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Drawing on elements from the landscape, spatial sound, and reconstructed 3D objects and architecture using photogrammetry, Laredo, USA and Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, come alive. For a few minutes, anyone can freely cross and roam along the virtual Frontera while listening to real border stories in this parallel–universe–like world where human made objects and architecture tell the stories of a border where humans no longer roam.
The collection of the stories shown in this project were made with successful and inspiring community–building workshops.
The Border Project (fronterizo) by Julio Obscura click the image to enlarge
Ent–
With Ent– (the eventual winner of the category) artist Libby Heaney aims to raise awareness around quantum computing through new experiential, visual languages developed by Heaney using quantum programming.
Ent– is a 360 immersive projection, drawing on surrealism to create an emotional, embodied experience for an audience. It is a quantum reinterpretation of the central panel of Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights, situated between heaven and hell, providing an analogue for the double–edged potential of quantum computing.
Ent- by Libby Heaney click the image to enlarge
The Lumen Prize
The Lumen Prize celebrates the very best art created with technology through a global competition. Since its launch in 2012, it has awarded more than US$100,000 in prize money and created opportunities worldwide for the artists who have been longlisted, shortlisted or won Lumen Awards. Lumen is run by Lumen Art Projects, a UK–based digital arts champion that builds these opportunities by curating exhibitions, commissions and events for art venues, cultural institutions and public spaces around the world as well as delivering consultancy services for partners globally.
The Lumen Prize and Lumen Arts Projects were founded in rural Wales by Carla Rapoport in 2012 and 2018 respectively.
