Ars Electronica Interactive Art Awards 2003

Golden Nica:
Blast Theory (United Kingdom): "Can You See Me Now?"
"Can you see me now?" by the British artists collective Blast Theory plays with the omnipresence of humans on the basis of various portable electronic devices such as mobile phones, GPS, wireless LANs, digital cameras, etc., as well as with overlaying real and virtual spaces. In that respect, "Can You See Me Now?" is part of a series of works that investigate digital mobility from a cultural point of view.

Awards of Distinction(2):Ltd. (Japan):
Maywa Denki / Yoshimoto Kogyo Co., Ltd. (Japan): "Tsukuba Series"
Maywa Denki is a Japanese artists' collective and simultaneously an electronic gesamtkunstwerk in its own right. Engineering skills, wit, a wealth of ideas and musicality combined with a unique performance style are the characteristics of Maywa Denki. The products from their workshop - a huge variety of custom created musical instruments - demonstrate both the group's playfulness and its know-how. With their performances, the Tosa Brothers have conquered the concert halls in Japan and abroad.

Margarete Jahrmann, Max Moswitzer (Austria): "nybble-engine-toolZ"
"nybble-engine-toolZ" is a peer-to-peer server network. The installation's software converts network processes into three-dimensional abstract movies and projects them in a cinema-like fashion onto a semicircular surround screen. Additionally, real-time generated surround sounds are played. This setup closes the loop of the installation: participants sit on a central "surfer sofa" as if they were in their own living-room. They use game-pads to enter a shooter game environment where "bullets" from data objects, action bots and other players whiz around. Every hit on an object triggers network processes; at every shot an anti-war mail is created and sent.

Honorable Mentions here: