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Prix Ars Electronica 2006 Winners

The winners of the 2006 Prix Ars Elecronica International Competition for Cyberarts have been announced. Categories in the competition include Computer Animation/Visual Effects, Digital Musics, Interactive Art, Net Vision, Digital Communities, and u19–Freestyle Computing. The Goldan Nica winner in the Digital Musics category was Eliane Radigue, one of the pioneers of electroacoustic music in the 1950s, for L'ile re-sonante [The Resonating Isle]. This year, the winner of another category also comes from the music community. Paul DeMarinis took the Golden Nica prize for Inter-active Art with The Messenger, a piece that transforms email messages from around the world into three systems of bizarre output devices that allow the audience to experience the message multi-sensorially. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1.

The Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica award for Interactive Art went to Paul DeMarinis for The Messenger. Source: Paul DeMarinis.

Awards of Distinction in Digital Musics went to Joe Colley for Psychic Stress Soundtracks, and to Kaffe Matthews/Annette Works for Sonic Bed_London. There were also twelve Honorary Mentions in the Digital Musics category which can be found on the Ars Electronica Web site.

The Prix Ars Electronica awards ceremony was held during the Ars Electronica Festival, 31 August–5 September in Linz, Austria, and the prizewinning works were put on display at the OK Center for Contemporary Art in an exhibition entitled CyberArts 2006.

Web: www.aec.at/en/prix/winners2006.asp.

Synthèse in Bourges

The Institut International de Musique Electroacoustique de Bourges (IMEB) held the 36th annual Synthèse festival 2–11 June 2006 in Bourges, France. The festival organized concert sessions around themes, devoting entire sessions to the music of Douglas Lilburn, video music, young composers, and music for the silent film classic The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Other evenings were arranged by composer nationalities with represented countries including Greece, Russia, Spain, France, Argentina, Chile, and New Zealand. Daytime workshops were also held and included reports on activity in The Netherlands and Argentina, and a discussion on Chilean composer Jose Vicente Asuar. An exhibition showcased 50 Years of Electroacoustic Music in Chile.

The winners of the 33rd Bourges International Competition of Electroacoustic Music and Sound Art were announced at the festival. Prizes were awarded in a variety of categories including formal aesthetics, programmatic works, music with devices and/or instruments, electroacoustic sound art, works for dance or theater, sound installations or sound environments, and multimedia. The full list of winners can be found on the IMEB Web site. The Magisterium prize went to Jorge Rapp of Argentina for his piece Otro tiempo, otro lugar . . . .

Web: www.imeb.net.

SOUNDplay 2006

New Adventures in Sound Art presented their Fifth Annual SOUNDplay festival 14 September–15 October at various locations around Toronto, Canada. This year's festival included sound sculptures, installations, videomusic screenings, performances, artist talks, and workshops. Highlights include new videomusic (nonnarrative video and sound art) from NomIG, Stephanie Loveless, Cliff Caines, Nelly-Eve Rajotte, and François Handfield. The theme of "resonance" was explored in sound sculptures from Finnbogi Pétursson, Mohammed Al Riffai, and Gary DiBenedetto.

Web: www.soundplay.ca.

Sounding Out 3

The third Sounding Out conference was held 7–9 September 2006 at the new Media Center of the University of Sunderland, England. The conference is for practitioners, students, and academics concerned with the use of sound as communication, entertainment, and creative practice, including radio practitioners, media and cultural theorists, games designers, sound artists, filmmakers, historians, musicians and composers, music therapists, commentators, and critics. Keynote deliveries included A Presenation of Experimental Radio Works by Ed Baxter, Crossing Between Media: Music, Voice and Image by Neil Brand, and The New Literacy of Sound: A Restrospect and some Prospects by Andrew Crisell.

Figure 2.

Jimmy Lakatos, Alex Buton, and Julien Roy of Artificiel performing Cubing at MUTEK 2006. Photo: Miguel Legault.

Web: www.soundingout.sunderland.ac.uk.

MUTEK 2006

The 2006 MUTEK International Festival of Music, Sound, and New Technologies was held from 31 May–4 June 2006 in Montreal, Canada (see Figure 2). Over 70 electronica...