Share Prize 2008: Jury Statement - Bruce Sterling, Piero Gilardi, Stefano Mirti, and Anne Nigten: This has been a very good year for the physical and the actual in digital culture. In the 1990s, virtual art, website art and Internet art would have dominated our entries. But in 2007, five of our six prize finalists involve a physical, hands-on encounter with digital technology — and we mean it is digital art that must be literally touched and gripped by the hands of artists and audience. The sixth piece is driven by living human breath.

It has recently been said that “cyberspace is turning itself out,” that “the virtual is becoming the actual.” We think this years’ chosen artists may have proven this thesis. They have created extraordinary works where digital images crawl out of screens and onto human fingers, where digital sound samples leave the computer to become solid chunks of wood carved on industrial lathes. We also have a large, synaesthetic, immersive installation, two multi-user interaction pieces suitable for groups, and one of the scariest and most physically confrontational pieces of electronic art yet created.

Digital art is getting heavier, more immediate, embodied and physically realized. Digital technology can manufacture now, and digital culture is changing our world in ways that we can touch, grip and feel.

It seems to us that these new trends favor a city long known for its industry and its high-tech craft, Torino, the World Capital of Design 2008. The chosen theme for our digital culture festival is “Manufacturing.”

We judges will be back in March 2008 to decide the winner among these six excellent finalists. We look forward to the best and most ambitious SHARE Festival ever.

The selected artists are:

Emanuel Andel, Knife.Hand.Chop.Bot, Austria
http://www.5voltcore.com/index.html?/content/khcb.html

D3D, Virtual Identity Process, Italy
http://www.master-naba-d3d.net/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=64

Yamada Kentaro, Tampopo, Japan
http://www.kentaroyamada.com/toshare

Owl Project, Sound Lathe workshop, Great Britain
http://variableg.org.uk/owlweb/soundlatheworkshop.htm

Scenocosme, SphèrAléas, France
http://www.spheraleas.com

Christine Sugrue, Delicate Boundaries, U.S.A.
http://csugrue.com/db_Share

SHARE FESTIVAL
Accademia Albertina di Belle Arti
Torino / 11-16 March 2007
Italy