Winners Announced! 14 Artists to Share the $100,000 Prize Pool of Art Dream Fund’s Second Call
“Increasingly the question is not whether we will become post-human, for post-humanity is already here. Rather, the question is what kind of post-humans we will be.”
— — N. Katherine Hayles
Launched on August 1, 2022, the second call of the $100 million Art Dream Fund finished on October 31. During the three months, over 300 applicants around the world submitted nearly 1,000 artworks, including those recommended by the Nomination and Selection Panel. The artworks range from video, animation, VR, and AR to audio art, digital art, drawing, and graphic design
Over $100,000 Prize Pool with Exclusive Promotion Channel
A Studio of Your Own and a Chance to List Your NFTs
Online/Offline Exhibitions & Workshops & Artist Residencies
Waiting for You
.
▲ Jury Panel (from left to right): Conlan Rios, Jonathan Crockett, Josh Baer, Sylvain Levy, and Philip Tinari
Development in science and technology has brought about new life forms, indicating the end of the traditional concept of the “human being” and the start of the era of post-humanity. As in Love, Death & Robots, when robots and other creatures are as affectionate, compassionate, and empathetic as human beings, what does this mean to us? First, human beings need to reconsider their positioning. Besides, the post-human era is marked by its multiple centers that are constantly flowing, changing, and intertwining — as a result, humans need to build and embrace a multicentric and diversified future. The aim of this round of Art Dream Fund was therefore to invite artists to respond to this complex era of “hybrid and symbiosis” through the visual language of new media.
After careful selection by the Organizing Committee and the Jury Panel, 14 artists finally stood out, who will share a prize pool of over $100,000. Moreover, The winners will also enjoy the opportunity to build their art studios in The Sandbox, a metaverse game to be launched by APENFT and TRON, as well as to participate in the annual online and offline exhibitions, workshops, artist residencies, and other art events curated by APENFT.
Congratulations to the 14 winners! They have responded to the increasingly diversified future by exploring the relationship between life and non-life forms and rethinking the positioning of human beings.
- Award Details -
Grand Prize Award $20,000
Fei Yining｜Breakfast Rituals
Best Creativity Awards $10,000
Ma Haijiao｜Insight
武子杨 Ziyang Wu
Tracy
CHILLLCHILL
Best Category Awards $5,000
easyJet©️Wong
田晓磊 Tian Xiaolei
Done
In-Dialog
Iris Qu
Wang wei
Async Visual-Audio Awards $5,000
WMD Collective
dubbb
FirstWave
- Award-Winning Artists and Their Works -
(in order of their awards)
Fei Yining
MFA in Design & Technology at Parsons School of Design, USA
Field of expertise: multimedia art, 3D animation, mobile imaging, and sculpture.
Project: Breakfast Rituals
Ma Haijiao
Master’s degree at China Academy of Art He is now working and living in Beijing, China.
Field of expertise: using “daily routine” to trace logical clues for constructing work forms and images/videos.
Project: Insight
Media: 4-minute colored video with sound
“The artist has built the film structure through association and constructed an interior space in orange. The artist has creatively processed materials in the smartphone’s photo library, such as video clips of flowers, snow mountains, and oranges, and repeatedly presented them in the project’s storyline.”
Ziyang Wu
MFA at Rhode Island School of Design, USA BFA at Florence Academy of Fine Arts, Italy
Now teaching in the School of Design & Innovation, China Academy of Arts.
Field of expertise: representation and application of the virtual world, data, and algorithms in the highly globalized post-internet era.
Project: Future_Forecast
Format: live simulation, online game, CGI animation
Tracy
Illustrator & Designer
MA in Illustration at Arts University Bournemouth, UK
Field of expertise: expanding the representation of illustration through different media to make the art of illustration more inclusive and connect it with a broader audience.
Project: Visible Violence
Format: illustrations
CHILLLCHILL
Fine Art, Sichuan Fine Arts Institute
Field of expertise: 3D virtual reality. When reality is thrown into the virtual world, it is randomly mixed and blended by the computer. What comes out of the computer includes mythology, sharing economy, eating shows, algorithms, and labor.
Project: A BRAVE NEW WORLD
“The rapid urbanization in China has brought about new landscapes. These environmental changes have resulted in a new round of underlying alteration in social relations of production, which has formed some different aesthetic languages in China’s post-internet art world. The work tries to mix them with a sense of humor, creating a new worldview through some kind of cracks: maybe this is how ‘A Brave New World’ was conceived.”
easyJet©️Wong
New media/crypto artist who lives in Berlin, Germany
A member of Weir DAO
Field of expertise: digital motion graphics, virtual technology, artificial intelligence, and crypto art.
Project: My Mind Is Your Memory, My Body Is Your Substance
Format: motion graphics and video works produced by digital technology
“The artist has used an android whose ‘life’ is approaching the end to explore topics including operating systems, the existence and life of androids, the creation of the body and mind of androids, and political issues regarding the death of an android.”
Done
Illustrator
Animation Design, University of the Arts London, UK
Field of expertise: 2D animation, 3D modeling and animation, 3D material and rendering, creative short animation.
Project: Evolution
“This is a concept that, in the future, human beings will evolve again and integrate with the body of insects. The limits of the human body are pushed further. New areas are being explored, aesthetic values are being upgraded, and the newly united bodies are breaking all set rules in our current civilization. This may well be a turning point for how humans live.”
In-Dialog
Established in 2014, the team is composed of artist Calin Segal, producer Tiffany Attali, and programmer Codin Segal.
Field of expertise: In-Dialog is exploring an interdisciplinary digital methodology that uses machines and algorithms to research how we interact and perceive our environment.
Project: Binary Deconstruction — Sculptures Beta
Format: interactive installation, collective experience, online storage
“Binary Deconstruction attempts to blur the boundaries between exhibition, production, and virtual space, similar to creating an assembly line within an exhibition space. The possible dynamics between artists, artworks, and the audience will shift as projects like this emerge, and the nature of artworks born in the digital world will be questioned.”
Iris Qu
Artist, technician, and programmer
MFA in Design & Technology at Parsons School of Design, The New School, USA
Field of expertise: the intersection of software engineering and new media art, using coding to approach topics of the speculation and politics of technologies.
Project: Do AIs Dream of Climate Chaos
“Do AIs Dream of Climate Chaos has expressed the seven prototypes of eco-social renewal.”
Wei Wang
MFA in Sculpture, Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts, China
School of Experimental and Sci-Tech Arts, Central Academy of Fine Arts, China
Field of expertise: 3D digital art, sculpture installation, and easel painting; focusing on new media and installation artworks featuring a Sci-Fi worldview.
Project: Player
“Player presents a Buddhist altar built in virtual space and combines the image of the Sakyamuni Buddha with that of a video game’s protagonist to create a new, magical religious image. The work tries to indicate that the evolving virtual world is not a shelter from the real world. The dreams of young people can be romantic but never realistic.”
田晓磊 Tian Xiaolei
BA Digital Media Art, Central Academy of Fine Arts, China
Field of expertise: video and installation, VR games, AR interaction, 3D printed sculptures, and lenticular stereogram.
Project: “Myths” series
Format: loop animation
“This is a long-term project. The artist imagines that they are specimens of the next generation of human-robot symbionts. Humanity is moving towards diversity and self-determination through internal and external add-ons. Human beings have become multi-racial and ramified and, finally, the only heterogeneous animal on earth. Meanwhile, the artist envisages that in the post-human era, human beings have broken free from the laws of evolution based on natural selection and started to use science and technology to purposefully alter the hardware and software of their bodies instead. The human revolution has become diversified and proactive. Computers are helping human beings design their revolution plans. Humans are not humans anymore but a variety of differentiated species.”
WMD Collective
A group of digital artists founded in 2022 in Berlin, Germany
Field of expertise: digital moving image, new media installation, AI, and VR.
Project: Coded World, Mystic Human
Format: CGI
“The human body and the coded world connect with each other through mechanical interfaces and USB cables. Human beings are transmitted both through physical and virtual coded spaces. In this post-human era, the existence of human beings has become mysterious as the lines have been blurred between the physical and digital worlds. Artists have constructed a world of futuristic and mythological elements with a conceptual CGI scenario.”
dubbb
Photographer and video artist based in Tel Aviv, Israel.
Active in Crypto Art Week Asia and the NFT expo at WOW Summit in Dubai.
Project: Robo Rights
Format: AI digital image
“The rapid growth of artificial intelligence, robotics, human-computer integration, and cybernetics has raised many philosophical and ethical questions. On the one hand, killer robots are being developed worldwide. On the other hand, artificial artists make us laugh and cry and sometimes even inspire us. So, are robots entitled to rights? Do they have feelings?What about biobots and hybrots?
FirstWave
Artist
Field of expertise: GIMP, Inkscape, and Blender 3D.
Project: Excursion
Format: automatic 3D engraving and animation
