Art award win puts AI innovators in spotlight
A senior lecturer in Design Informatics has won a global award that celebrates great art created with technology.
Dave Murray-Rust, who is based in Edinburgh College of Art, won a prestigious Lumen Prize for an interactive installation that he created with Rocio von Jungenfeld, of the University of Kent.
The BCS Artificial Intelligence Award - one of nine award categories in the Prize - recognises artists who have incorporate AI into compelling artworks.
Celebrating success
The award, which was presented at the Barbican Centre in London, also seeks to celebrate the success of outstanding practice-based research projects.
The installation – called Lichtsuchende – features a dazzling array of diminutive robotic creatures. It was a collaboration that grew out of an Innovative Initiative grant at the University of Edinburgh .
The curious, biologically inspired creations are reminiscent of sunflowers, exchanging light as a source of energy and as a means of communication.
Each one turns its head to follow the brightest lights while sending out own light so it can engage with other robots and human visitors.
Research interests
Lichtsuchende reflects the research interests of the artists, whose work is concerned with ways that people, data and things interact.
It has already been exhibited at the New Technology Art Awards in Ghent in 2015, the Exo-evolution exhibition in ZKM Karlsruhe in 2016, and the following year's Edinburgh Science Festival.
Dave Murray-Rust is also Director of Inspace in the University's Informatics Forum - a public engagement research site and exhibition space where data meets culture. Rocio von Jungenfeld is a Digital Media lecturer.
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