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After completing our week long installation at the Anti-Design Festival in London's trendy Shoreditch gallery district, we were all ready to settle in to a much needed period of rest. The project had been a massive success, seeing over 6000 people through the doors of the small Londonewcastle project space on Redchurch Street over the course of the week.Ìý

Following the festival, we received the brilliant news that our interactive installation - 'The Cut Up' had been accepted on to the short list for the NEMarts prize which was to be awarded at the Networked and Electronic Media summit in Barcelona, an event which brings together industry leaders and experts to both exhibit their latest creations and products and to share and discuss ideas about areas and issues surrounding technology at large.Ìý

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NEMarts was introduced to the conference this year to reflect the rapidly expanding area of networked and electronic art, with a whole host of contributors across a large range of disciplines exhibiting their creations in the main hall. In addition to the exhibition of the art works, there was also a program of open discussions which brought together the artists, engineers and academics involved in the event to explore the relationships between technology, art and design and wider issues surrounding open innovation with the aim of inspiring new work and topics for future discussions and collaborations.

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'The Cut Up' Ìýhad to be physically reworked by Dave and Ryszard of our collaborators on the project, Ìýto better fit into the space we were given in the NEM exhibition hall. This new manifestation of the piece consisted of a massive central plywood pillar containing the four displays, with the speakers and furniture being arranged in a circle around the outside. The piece proved to be extremely popular with the delegates at the summit, its sheer plywood face and otherworldly sounds providing a welcome departure from the usual slick and neat conference fare.Ìý

As well as representing 'The Cut Up', we were here as part of a wider 91Èȱ¬ R&D presence, exhibiting some of the project work and prototype ideas currently being worked on at R&D including VSAR, MyMedia, and the software based virtual stedi-cam. R&D was also well represented at the conference itself, Adrian Woolard, Project Lead in our North Lab, Chris Chambers, head of the Media Network Integration Lab and George Wright, head of Prototyping were at NEM chairing and contributing to the panel discussions.

The closing ceremony was wrapped up by an inspiring talk by French artist Thierry Coduys on artist-engineer collaboration using the historical example of the 1967 piece '9 Evenings: Theatre and Engineering', a collaboration between Bells Labs and a number of different artists including John Cage and Lucinda Childs, and some of his own work, including his epic infrabass installation in the Grand Palais in Paris for Monumenta in 2008.

Following this, Roger Torrenti, CEO of Sigma Orionis came up to present the award. With what seemed like an outrageously long pause, he proceeded not to announce a single winner, but went on to explain how the award Ìýwas going to be split between 5 of the 17 works submitted for the NEMarts prize.Ìý

First out was our own piece, 'The Cut Up'!

The other winners were then announced one by one:

- THIG, a piece exploring ideas of non-anthopocentric social networking
- MHASHUP a music signature piece looking at congruences between music of different civilisations
- LiveCell, an interactive generative music piece
- ArtLab, a project looking at bridging the digital divides

There was some outrageously stiff competition from the other submitted works to NEM arts, and I don't think any of us were really expecting to take home any prizes. Massive thanks to the whole ADF team, to Rowena Goldman for getting us out there and to the engineers at R&D to helped us, again with advice and loan of equipment. This project has been fantastic, and to finish it off with an international award really is the icing on the cake.

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Chris Pike receives the award on behalf of the Cut-up

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