The book Interact or Die!, published in 2007 by V2_, has won the Prix Ars Electronica in the Media Art Research category. The Prix Ars Electronica, founded in 1987, is awarded by the Ars Electronica Center and the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute, both of Linz, Austria. Media Art Research is a new category established to recognize distinguished theoretical work in the area of interactive art forms. A €5,000 award is attached to the prize.

Interact or Die! concerns interaction at every level. The book is about communication between molecules, between humans and animals, between trees and the sun. Artists play an important part in the interviews and essays in “Interact or Die!” They are the ones who test material, stretch it, extend it, twist it and recombine it into artistic forms and structures.

The jury report on “Interact or Die!”:

“Ultimately, interaction is an essential precondition for every social organization. (…) Interactivity, in turn, is the method of bringing such behavior into a specific form and, at the same time, a particular approach to dealing with it, whereby attention is focused in equal measure on human activity as well as processes taking place in nature and technology.”

V2_ is delighted to have won the prize and views the bestowing of the Prix Ars Electronica as a recognition of its efforts to help develop a theory of electronic art. V2_’s books are used in art education and at universities in the Netherlands and abroad.