This year, the £500 Schauerman Digital Art Prize will be selected by digital artists and London Group members Genetic Moo (Nicola Schauerman and Tim Pickup) and Sandra Crisp. We want more digital artists to become involved with the Group and hope the prize will encourage this. Nicola’s parents, Marie & John Schauerman, were creative throughout their lives and excited by new technology. This prize is in memory of their enthusiasm and support.
To be eligible for the Schauerman Digital Art Prize you need to enter and be selected for The London Group Open. This is the 85th Open exhibition which has been running throughout the group’s 110+ year history.
The prize is for Digital Art so we will be looking at works that have involved computing or electronics at some point. The judges will be generous in deciding what is or isn’t digital and will consider all genres including still imagery, photography, video, audio, installation, interactive, generative, games, VR, AR, robotics, AI, NFTs, etc. The possibilities are endless.
As technology changes, art changes and The London Group is engaging with digital art more and more – see these London Group exhibitions: In the Dark and The Mesh
The Prize is relatively new with two previous winners:
Chirag Jindal – 2019 / No 12 The Uncanny / LiDAR scan
‘No 12 The Uncanny’ is not a photograph – it is a 3-D scan with millions of points of data. The work is made using laser technology – a LiDAR scanner. A laser pulse is sent out of a transmitter and the light particles are scattered back to the receiver creating a 3D digital replica of the space. In the case of Uncanny, the scanner was moved through a lava tunnel under an Auckland street and then on the surface above it and finally, the two scans were connected. Colour has been sourced using traditional photographic processes and mapped onto each individual point of data.
Chirag Jindal lives and works in New Zealand. He has sent the following statement :
“As a debut project, the work follows many long periods of experimenting, indecision and risk. It’s a privilege to have it be given recognition and a platform for outreach and exposure – especially amongst such talented peers. Naturally, I want to thank the London Group for hosting the exhibition, and supporting the progression of digital media as an art form.”
Sandra Crisp – 2017 / ‘remote_city (skygardens_towers)’ / video
remote city (skygardens_towers), 3’12”, 2016
The camera pans through elevated levels of a fragmented and futuristic city featuring sky gardens, and empty high-rise towers that humans appear to have left behind. Hybrid ‘architectural models are textured with borrowed/downloaded visuals and smartphone-camera stills embedded into their multi-faceted surfaces. Whilst online maps of real-world city locations are used as templates to create 3d structures. The film was originally inspired by a journalism article ‘Ghost Towers’ about unoccupied high-rise towers in the city.
Sandra Crisp lives and works in London and has been a member of The London Group since 2018.
“I was really surprised and delighted to be awarded the first Schauerman Digital Art Prize at The London Group Open 2017. Obviously, this was very welcome towards the cost of developing new work, but mostly it represented support and positive feedback. As a result of being awarded the prize, I was nominated to be a new member of The London Group in early 2018. Since then, I have taken part in many group exhibitions with other members whose practice includes painting, drawing, print, video and digital art – a diverse and very supportive network of artists.
Click to enter The London Group Open