Digital artists are engaging with problems in the real world

Just announced, the Lumen Prize shortlist reflects serious social concerns, writes Nick Leech

Work by the artists Thijs Biersteker, Zarah Hussain, Zheng Da and Jonathan Monaghan features on the 38 project-strong international shortlist for this year’s Lumen Prize for Digital Art, the UK-based award and not-for-profit social enterprise with a prize fund of US$11,750 (Dh43,000) and a travelling group exhibition.

The prize recognises excellence across eight categories, including web, interactive and artificial intelligence, 3D/sculpture, still and moving image, VR/AR and place-making.

The prize is being judged in its sixth year by a panel that includes Weiwei Wang, curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai, the V&A’s senior curator of word and image Doug Dodds, Foteini Aravani, digital curator at the Museum of London and Bruce Wands, chair emeritus at New York’s School of Visual Arts.

The prize was founded in 2012 by the former business journalist Carla Rappaport who used to write about technology for the Financial Times and the Economist Intelligence Unit.

“The judges have had a time of it this year – the entries were up by more than 25 per cent and the scope of the categories has broadened tremendously,” Lumen’s founder and director said. “Digital art today is also becoming much more engaged with social issues, not surprising given today’s events.”

Themes of privacy, environmentalism and the ongoing European refugee crisis featured prominently in the more than 800 submissions that were entered for the 2017 award, issues that are addressed directly by works such as Isabelle Arver’s Heroic Makers vs Heroic Land, which has been shortlisted for the moving image award.

The winners of the gold and category awards will be announced on September 20 at a prize-giving ceremony at the Frontline Club in London.