Back 19.12.2019

Award: Spectre Longlisted for Aesthetica Art Prize 2020

Well this is definitely a nice early christmas present… It is with great pleasure that I can announce that Spectre has been longlisted for the Aesthetica Art Prize 2020 and will feature in the publication Aesthetica Art Prize Anthology: Future Now!

Slightly shell-shocked to get the news yesterday as we join the 100 contemporary artists for the Aesthetica Art Prize exhibition at York Art Gallery in March 2020. The Art Prize is open to works in any genre, and on any theme, however the jury are particularly interested in works that reflect upon our ever changing world.

 

 

Previous exhibitions have posed larger questions about what it means to exist in a digitised, post-industrial landscape, as well as the effects of over-consumption, media stimulation, globalisation, and the climate crisis.

The Art Prize jury comprises influential art world figures, including curators, academics and artists whose expertise spans across all media. We would like to send a huge thank you to the Aesthetica Art Prize jury comprised of Sarah Allen, Assistant Curator at Tate; Ameena M.McConnell at Ambydesign; Andreas Gegner at Sprueth Magers; Dr. Beatrice Bertram, Curator at York Gallery; Cherie Federico, co-founder of Aesthetica Magazine; Claire Catterall, Senior Curator at Somerset House; Damon Jackson-Waldock; Deputy Curator at Yorkshire Sculpture Park; Diane Smyth, digital editor at British Photography Journal; Dryden Goodwin, artist and Professor at Slade School of Art; Eliza Williams ,Editor at Creative Review; Dr. Ope Lori, artist and Director at PILAA; Pierre Saurisse, lecturer at Sotherbys Institute of Art; Shashti Lowton and Yuen Fong Ling, Artist, Curator and Senior Lecturer at Sheffield Hallam.

We would also like to send a huge thank you for the generous support of Arts Council England, Sheffield DocFest, Site Gallery, British Council, and MUTEK Montreal. We are incredibly grateful for the encouragement and support to date and can’t wait to bring Spectre to more audiences in 2020!

Since myself and Daniel Howe secured initial R&D funding from Arts Council England, we were incredibly fortunate to be awarded the ‘Alternate Realities’ 2019 Artist Commission as part of the Sheffield Doc/Fest 2019. Since then the project has been taking on a life of its own after receiving a bewildering amount of global media coverage since its premier at Site Gallery in June 2019.

Last but not least to our incredible team of designers, developers, behavioural psychologists, consultants, friends and project partners including the Psychometrics Centre, Cambridge University and CannyAI for their continued support to realise this ambitious and complex work.

During the 8 weeks we had to develop Spectre from an initial R&D project to the final installation for the Alternate Realities commission at Site Gallery as part of Sheffield Doc/Fest, we (somehow) managed to make a short film covering some of the conceptual inspirations, technologies and thematics that Spectre ciritically interrogates. As far as we know, this is the world’s first non-fiction short that uses deep fake technologies as a core part of narrative storytelling.

You can view our short film ‘Spectre: A Detour Into Dataism’ here:

 

 

You can also learn more about the Spectre project and see the press coverage here.

More details to follow!

Happy Christmas everyone!