Festival Digital Arts Zurich honors creators of the digital arts for the first time

The Digital Art Zurich Festival is starting its fifth edition. The program includes interactive exhibitions, audiovisual concerts, a conference that combines digital art and science - and, for the first time, an award ceremony.

For the first time, Digital Art Zurich (DA Z) is honoring artists for digital art in various categories. For example, Filip Gabriel Pudło from Poland for his performance "The who solved the man world": he shows images generated in real time and accompanies them with the sounds of current signals from around the world. The images relate to the economic and social situation in the world. The audience is invited to immerse themselves and search for their own associations and meanings.

Seven prizes for digital art

The performance will be presented live at the award ceremony. The other works of the winners will be on display at the DA Z exhibitions. For example, "Hyper Zone" by Ana Hofmann from Zurich. She was awarded the prize in the video category for her film, which is set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. This is where the protagonists create their new realities.

Three prizes are awarded in the Web category, all of which go to Switzerland, to Amaury Hamon from Lausanne, Nacoca Ko from Geneva and Max Vogler from Zurich. Hamon presents a website on which 3D landscapes unfold, allowing users to explore networked media. Ko builds a bridge between analog and digital reality. And Vogler presents a mixed reality chat app that invites users to take a new perspective on urban landscapes.

The prizes in the Virtual Reality and Mixed Reality categories also go to Berlin. Those responsible have selected the seven winning entries from a total of 300 submissions, as detailed in a DA Z press release. The prizes are not endowed. But "they make the winners visible and are a boost for their careers", DA Z Managing Director Tanja Hollenstein told the Keystone-SDA news agency.

Globally networked community

This is also a key characteristic of DA Z and digital art in general. In the analog world, the level of awareness of the artists is manageable. In contrast, the reach in the global digitally networked community is high, says Hollenstein. In addition, many works, such as Pudło's performance, are unique experiences that cannot be kept in a museum or in your own living room.

And so this year's DA Z once again features internationally renowned artists. They address global social developments, such as environmental destruction, growing social polarization and the influence of artificial intelligence (AI) on societies.

Greek artist Kyriaki Goni, for example, will be showing her woven tapestries with computer-generated subjects that question the tech giants' expansion into space.

Or Maotik from France: his performance at the interface of art, science and technology takes the audience on a journey through various forms of matter from solids to plasmas.

Blockchain beyond capital transactions

Or Terra0 from Germany: the artists' collective wants to use blockchain, or an NFT (non-fungible token), to enable a forest to manage itself digitally. If global warming rises above two degrees, the NFT will self-destruct. Incidentally, such an NFT is also part of the Mercedes Benz Art Collection; should the two-degree limit be exceeded, it too would have to destroy itself.

The 5th edition of DA Z runs from October 31 to November 10. The venues are the Museum für Gestaltung, the Wasserkirche and the Kunsthaus. The opening event will be the vernissage with the award ceremony; the Ukrainian pianist Alexey Botvinov will provide the final chord in the Wasserkirche. He plays works by Bach, Rachmaninov and Astor Piazzolla and also works with visual artists.

SDA