Award 2021
Welcome to the Social Art Award 2021 – Online Gallery!
We are grateful for the many inspiring contributions from artists around the world. The selected works reflect a broad spectrum of contemporary social art practices and explore new relationships between humans, nature, and technology. They address themes such as ecological regeneration, climate justice, sustainable futures, social resilience, and more-than-human perspectives.
Below you will find the submissions from the Social Art Award 2021 – New Greening edition that passed the initial jury round. The Online Gallery offers public visibility to these works and encourages dialogue around their ideas and approaches; it does not replace the final jury decision.
Thank you to all artists for sharing your visionary and committed work. We invite you to explore the gallery and engage with the perspectives shaping New Greening.
The Game of Life on a Planet
Yoann Bourse
Technology, and AI in particular, are at the core of our hopeful prospects to manage and recover from the current climate crisis. But it is ultimately just a tool that is in the hand of humankind. This social art exhibition is the perfect moment to remember that our New Greening will have to be for everyone and by everyone. For even if there are macro forces at play, they are inextricably tied to individual responsibility. This interactive experience, hosted at http://yo252yo.com:9090/, showcases this interplay of forces with an aesthetic inspired by Conway’s Game of Life. This infinitely blooming virtual tree is sensitive to its environment: the more demand (eyeballs) placed on it, the darker the surroundings, and it may even wither. Are you ready to sacrifice your chance at the spectacle so that others may see it? Can the crowd find an equilibrium to allow for a lasting responsible growth? Art is a powerful communication tool, which can go way beyond words to express emotions directly. In particular, social art, by its participatory nature, involves the viewer directly in the meaning it represents. I think that art, more than anything else, can really communicate the joint prospects of hope and of shared responsibility that come with a New Greening, because ultimately the core components of this change are the people, may they be directly involved through their activities or indirectly through their consumption and expression.
Technology, and AI in particular, are at the core of our hopeful prospects to manage and recover from the current climate crisis. But it is ultimately just a tool that is in the hand of humankind. This social art exhibition is the perfect moment to remember that our New Greening will have to be for everyone and by everyone. For even if there are macro forces at play, they are inextricably tied to individual responsibility. This interactive experience, hosted at http://yo252yo.com:9090/, showcases this interplay of forces with an aesthetic inspired by Conway’s Game of Life. This infinitely blooming virtual tree is sensitive to its environment: the more demand (eyeballs) placed on it, the darker the surroundings, and it may even wither. Are you ready to sacrifice your chance at the spectacle so that others may see it? Can the crowd find an equilibrium to allow for a lasting responsible growth? Art is a powerful communication tool, which can go way beyond words to express emotions directly. In particular, social art, by its participatory nature, involves the viewer directly in the meaning it represents. I think that art, more than anything else, can really communicate the joint prospects of hope and of shared responsibility that come with a New Greening, because ultimately the core components of this change are the people, may they be directly involved through their activities or indirectly through their consumption and expression.