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Press Release MILKproject

A Dutch/Latvian locative-media art project wins the Golden Nica award
for interactive art of the Ars Electronica Festival.

Photograph: these days, the MILKproject installation is showing at the
Making Things Public exhibition in ZKM, Zentrum für Kunst und
Medientechnologie, Karlsruhe, Germany. www.zkm.de <#www.zkm.de>

On Monday, 24 May 2005, it was announced that the new media
project MILK has won the Golden Nica award in the category
Œinteractive artš. The award will be granted during the Ars Electronica
festival in Linz, Austria, from 1 to 6 September 2005, where the work
will also be part of the Cyberarts exposition (1-18 September 2005).
The Ars Electronica festival is internationally seen as a reference to the
developments in the field of electronic arts.

The project of the artist Esther Polak and researcher Ieva Auzina
followed a European dairy transportation from the udder of the
(Latvian) cow, to the mouth of the (Dutch) consumer. All people who
played a role in this chain received, for a day, a GPS-device (Global
Positioning System) that registered their movements.

The artists developed a lucid visualization-software for these traces,
and let the participants react upon them in their own kitchens or living
rooms. In the final installation- a homey space with footstools, twilight
lamps, an oversized radio and a projection screen, the onlooker can
join the enjoyment of these visually attractive images and the at times
hilarious comments of the participants. By this the personal life-stories
of these very different Europeans are shown, from the Latvian farmer
to the Dutch open-air market salesman with his clients, who are all
connected by one thing: the milk from a truck of one Latvian milk
collector.

MILKproject demonstrates that contemporary technology can also
realize a special intimacy: one can follow the steps of the farmer who
produces our food on the other side of Europe. Nevertheless,
MILKproject is also a completely new imagery of the globalized
landscape: connected by and cut through usually invisible lines. The
MILKproject shows these lines and opens therewith the possibility to
realize that there hides a landscape behind every product we buy, and
every bite we take, a landscape with its own spatial principals, that is
populated, cultivated and set foot on by its own, special people.

MILKproject, Esther Polak, Ieva Auzina and Rixc, Riga centre for new
media culture.

www.milkproject.net

Contact: milkproject  milkproject.net

more information about Ars Electronica: www.aec.at