Share Prize is the longest running Italian prize dedicated to the most innovative artistic proposals within the contemporary scene. For this year, a timely and controversial theme, “ELABORATOR: the Heart of the Artificial Intelligence“, born from the vision of our Artistic Director Bruce Sterling and Curator Jasmina Tešanovic.

Find out more about Share Festival XVI ︎︎︎

Artworks︎︎︎

Sound for fungi

 WINNER 

Theresa Schubert

"SOUND FOR FUNGI. HOMAGE TO INDETERMINACY" BEGAN AS A LABORATORY EXPERIMENT WHERE SCHUBERT PLAYED SINUS FREQUENCIES TO FUNGI MYCELIA SHE COLLECTED FROM FORESTS NEAR HER HOME IN BERLIN.

After weeks of observing these collected specimens housed in custom-built sound-insulated boxes, most showed a positive response to the influence of sound by growing faster and denser than samples grown in silence. The interactive video installation simulates Schubert’s experiment where sound influenced mycelium growth. Audiences can explore this biological process by using a tracking sensor where hand movements simulate the role of a sound frequency and change the fungi’s growth in real time. The digital 3D environment shifts between macro and cellular level perspectives, revealing fragile topologies comprising multiple nodes and connections, offering a glimpse into the complexity of the underground network of microbes that connect the ‘Wood Wide Web’.
The title draws reference to American music composer John Cage’s development of "indeterminacy'' as an improvisational technique where aspects of a composition are left open to chance or free-choice.

Plant Drone

David Bowen

PLANT DRONE EXPLORES THE ANTHROPOCENE IN AN INVERSE AND SPECULATIVE WAY.

This performance will enable a plant from the local landscape to pilot a small drone. As human activity increasingly affects the natural balance across the globe, this work raises some important questions and posits new scenarios for art making; such as, is it possible for nature to assert a discrete amount of meaningful control over a complex human constructed system?

For Plant drone, I have created a flight control system that connects to action potentials, the electrical noise currents found in plants. Action potentials are often generated by plants as a response to stimuli such as wind, light, touch and sound. The system will use an open source micro-controller connected to the plant to read its electrical signals as varying resistance across each of the plant leaves. These signals will be collected in real-time, mapped and used to pilot a drone. Essentially the plant will be the pilot of the drone as it creates long exposure photographic drawings in the sky.

Sole

Quiet Ensemble

ARTIFICIAL SUNLIGHT PASSES THROUGH THE ARCHITECTURE ILLUSORILY.

SOLE reflects on the profound transformation that technology has brought about in the context of many of our life experiences, which have in fact become increasingly virtual and mediated by an invisible artificial intelligence.
The installation alludes to the ephemeral of the boundary between natural and artificial, real and virtual of the contemporary world, evoking the possibility of a delicate and invisible technology, capable of enriching and enhancing our experience without erasing its naturalness. An artificial scenario of light and shadow, which redesigns all the surfaces of the architecture. The visitor crosses an unreal context, travels in a time and space that are hours, days or light years away from our here and now. The use of multimedia technologies in this case does not intend to generate a virtual reality, but aims to disappear, accompanying the experience along imaginary, but possible paths.

Bosco Mistico

Ooop Studio

THE WOOD, A SACRED, VITAL AND UNCONTAMINATED PLACE, ALWAYS PRESENT BUT FORGOTTEN ACCOMPANIES US ETERNALLY LIKE A SILENT WITNESS.

It breaths next to us and it goes on with its productive cycle, even when as the night falls, the city stops: the machine shuts down, while nature, through every fiber and every inhabitant, animal or plant, carries on operating, making it possible to magic of awakening, giving life to a ritual that takes place from dusk to dawn.
The project Bosco Mistico invites us to rediscover the natural world in a magical moment, reminding us to stop, to find ourselves again, perceiving and becoming aware of the space around us with an installation that involves all the senses. Videos establish a connection with sight and hearing, while the smells establish freshness and the petrichor are evoked by monochromatic images and simple geometries, presented in a multi-sensory, contemplative, dynamic work that dialogues with nature by recreating a connection with it.

Screenization

Lorenz Potthast

HONORARY MENTION

SCREENS HAVE BECOME THE MOST INFLUENTIAL, YET OVERLOOKED MATERIALIZATION OF THE DIGITAL AND THE HYPER-SURFACES OF OUR TIME.

The project “Screenization” is based on a detailed theoretical research that examines the history of screens and their various predecessors at the intersection of visual perception, natural science, performative practices and media archeology. The term Screenization is introduced to describe the general dissemination of screens into aspects of everyday life on the one hand, and the more technical diffusion of screenic properties into new contexts and behaviors on the other.
To make speculations about future development of screens tangible, two experimental infrastructures have been developed: Autonomous pixel units that explore what would happen if pixels could be spread like paint and a sculpture consisting purely of a screenic material that questions our understanding of surface and materiality.

O tempo perguntou ao tempo

João Alves

IT IS WAITING FOR TIME TO GO BY SO THAT EVERYTHING SIGNIFICANT HAPPENS.

Time passes by and takes all these moments, which are thus not valued and end up being forgotten in our timeline. In a society inherently linked to the neoliberal rhythm of production, we perceive the time of things as something immediate and momentary. Just as time is always counting, our space is always in motion. There is no moment (in time and space) where we can really be a part of and reflect on. Perhaps that is the goal. A dissociation of the real moment, the production of the deluded look and the false consciousness. After all, everything is fine when we don't waste time thinking about it. When we finally have time to reflect, it is already too late. This work intends to function as a space for that reflection: by taking the attitude of waiting perhaps life will not pass us by. Maybe we will breathe, think and reflect. So that we can walk along with time. Or maybe we will still lose everything that our time has to offer.

Jury Members