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The NOVA Prize seeks visionary artists who incorporate new media and interactive methods in their work. The Prize is dedicated to uniting artistic concepts with future-oriented technologies, and facilitating communication between artists and global audiences.

The juried competition is open to artists around the world. The winner received a cash prize of $16,000 and a three-city expenses-paid exhibition tour beginning at the 2018 Prix Ars Electronica Festival in Austria, traveling to Big House Contemporary Art Center in Wuhan, and then to New York. Upon jury review of the digital applications, the winner was announced on August 30, 2018. The NOVA New Media Interactive Art Prize will be awarded annually.

Collaborating institutions for the NOVA Prize included some of the world’s most innovative art and cultural institutions, foundations, and art academies. The seven-person jury includes leading artists and contemporary art curators from the U.S., China, Austria, and Germany.

“We are initiating this prize to support emerging talent and to offer contemporary art experiences and education for the public,” said Cui Qiao, president of the Beijing Contemporary Art Foundation, a publicly-funded foundation and cultural think tank in China focusing on the development of contemporary arts. “The NOVA Prize aims to inspire and encourage emerging artists to explore the intersection of art and technology and redefine the two disciplines.”

The work of LarbitsSisters – social media researcher Bénédicte Jacobs and media artist Laure-Anne Jacobs – is situated at the crossroads of art, technology, and social systems. Beginning in 2010, their collaboration grew out of a shared fascination of new media, merging research and artistic practice into projects exploring traceability, data processing, network analysis, algorithms, automation, and interactivity.