ART
A still image from PAN/PAN, the video that won Anna Eyler the Emerging Digital Artists Award 2018. Image: EDAA
ART NEWS: Anna Eyler wins the 2018 Emerging Digital Artists Award, Canada’s first digital art award dedicated to fostering experimentation in the work of emerging artists.
BY KAZAD
CANADA-Anna Eyler is the winner of year’s Emerging Digital Artists Award (EDAA). The announcement came Saturday at a private event hosted by EQ Bank and Trinity Square Video in Toronto. Her video animation PAN/PAN was selected out of the many entries to this year’s event. As the winner, Anna Eyler will receive $5,000 in award money, and a secured spot in Trinity Square Video’s 2019 Themed Commission program.
Anna Eyler’s work was selected by this year’s judges based on its excellent technical execution and nuanced visual investigation of technology’s relationship to the natural environment.
Judges included Tobias Williams, a Toronto-based artist, and educator, Emily Fitzpatrick, an independent curator, and arts administrator; Yifat, an acclaimed game designer and artist working on creating autobiographical games and subversive art; and Lindsay LeBlanc, Equitable Bank’s Art Curator, and the co-founder of the Emerging Digital Artists Award.
PANPAN from AnnaEylerr on Vimeo.
In PAN/PAN, Anna Eyler uses the present to look into the future examining the connections between exploration, wilderness, and technology in a contemporary context. Using landscapes painting and NASA live-streams she raises the question of the impact of technology and how humans, in their capacity to use technology for destruction. Inherent in her narrative is perhaps, in this age of artificial intelligence, technological creations might become masters in their own right. Although Anna Eyler’s computer-generated video is playful, its discourse is forcefully inserted into a narrative questioning the future roles of artificial intelligence.
Emerging Digital Artists Award adds to the many awards Anna Eyler has won over the years for her works. Presently an MFA candidate in Sculpture and Ceramics at Concordia University, her recent awards include the Artengine New Media Award (2015), the Sparkbox Residency Award (2016), and the Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship (2017). Anna Eyler holds a BA in Religious Studies and Art History from Carleton University (2010) and a BFA from the University of Ottawa (2015).
Emerging Digital Artists Award Finalists
Finalists for this year’s Emerging Digital Artists Award include Emily Hamel, Alvin Luong, Xuan Ye, and Shaheer Zazai. Emily Hamel‘s video entry is titled The Queer in the Rural while Alvin Luong’s is a 2016 video is titled Taking is too easy, but that’s the way it is (Dance, Dance, Revolution?) Xuan Ye’s entry is a 2018 Web and audio piece titled In Between () We Oscillate while Shaheer Zazai’s video is called Carpet No. 7 (2017). The finalist will each receive a $1,000 award.
The Emerging Digital Artists Award (EDAA) started in 2015. It is Canada’s first digital art award dedicated to fostering experimentation in the work of emerging artists. Additionally, it provides opportunities for those working in digital media. Past winners include Fanny Huard 2017, Trudy Erin Elmore 2016, and Colin Rosal 2015. Works by winners of The Emerging Digital Artists Award 2018 will be on display at Trinity Square Video, Toronto through October 13, 2018.
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