The Szpilman Award is awarded to ephemeral art works - or in other words: works that exist only for a moment or a short period of time.

The winner of the 2011 award has just been announced, and the award goes to the Slovakian artist Jaroslav Kyša.

Kyša is awarded for the work 'The Barrier' in which he uses doves to create disturbance in the city of London by secretly scattering their favorite fodder in front of shops or across busy streets.

Another brilliant work (and a personal favorite) among the top six nominees is David Horvitz's Public Access (PDF link).
David Horvitz drove up the coast of California and stopped at about 50 different coastal access points along the trip where he took a picture of the ocean with himself within the frame of the photograph. Using different user accounts and IP's, he then he uploaded the pictures to the Wikipedia-articles of each of these places.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palos_Verdes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaviota,_California

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pismo_Beach,_California

Editor debate on Wikipedia.

The pictures have supposedly been removed or cropped by edgy Wikipedia editors, but it looks like David Horvitz is still in some of the articles.

• The Szpilman Award

One last post from this year's Ars Electronica Festival with photos from the event "Marketplace for Talents" (Marktplatz der Talente).

Around 50 youngsters lined up at a long table across the central bridge in Linz crossing the Donau. The youngsters were all experts in a specific topic and they offered to demonstrate their skills and share their knowledge with people passing by. Areas of expertise ranged from "The Solar System" and "Transformer Robots" to "Drawing Stars".

An expert in: Animation

An expert in: Creative arts

An expert in: Web Comics

An expert in: Cirkus

An expert in: Yugioh

An expert in: Drawing stars

An expert in: Dragons

Two experts in: The Solar System

An expert in: Transformer Robots

It was a hot, windy and busy afternoon

Marketplace for Talents was probably one of the least electronic events at the Ars Electronica Festival - but also one of the most charming and humorous ones. The event was a part of the new u19 sub-festival "CREATE YOUR WORLD: Future Festival of the Next Generation".

• Create Your World

In collaboration with AVA Academia GUERRILLA INNOVATION is giving away a copy of the new book Design for Sustainable Change: How Design and Designers Can Drive the Sustainability Agenda.

To enter you simply have to retweet this post.

Deadline August 15. The winner gets personally notified.

About the book:
Design for Sustainable Change is a book about how design is evolving and being applied to social and environmental challenges.
The book introduces new design terms (Design Activism, Service Design, Design Thinking) and key theories and debates around design and sustainability are explained using interviews and case studies such as the community initiative Green Mapping, the open source project Foldschool and the green city of Freiburg.

Design for Sustainable Change is a part of AVA's Design Management series. The book is aimed at visual arts students and practitioners but anyone with a broad interest in design can use it to get an overview of some of the most important developments and challenges of design today.

• AVA Academia: Design for Sustainable Change

In collaboration with BIS Publishers guerrilla-innovation.com is giving away a copy of the new book 'Open Design Now: Why Design Cannot Remain Exclusive'

To enter do one of the following:

1) Retweet this.

2) Or if you don't use Twitter: Use the comment box below and simply name a designer/artist you admire.

Deadline June 21. Some sort of random system will be used to pick a winner. The winner gets personally notified.

About the book:
Open design is a way of designing that everyone can participate in. The philosophy of open design is identical to that of the open source movement, but with a focus on physical products and services rather than software. Open Design Now: Why Design Cannot Remian Exclusive surveys this emerging field for the first time.

Contributors include John Thackara (Doors of Perception), Renny Ramakers (Droog Design) and Bert Mulder (adviser to Dutch ministries). They look at what's driving open design and where it is going. The book also contains a visual index and a variety of case studies ranging from RepRap - the self-replicating 3D-printer to the Instructables Restaurant and IKEA hackers.

• www.bispublishers.nl

The fashion/concept label BLESS (by Ines Kaag and Desiree Heiss) recently opened a new shop in a private apartment in Berlin.

The shop is located on the third floor in a typical residential street in Prenzlauer Berg.

BLESS collections are mixed with the apartment's interior and decor and some items are for sale, while others are personal belongings. The shop is looked after by various 'shop sitters' who get to live there in exchange for looking after the place. Currently it's occupied by French artist Cyril Duval.

BLESS Shop on German TV channel Cafe Trend

The shop is open to the public on Thursdays between 8-14 or by appointment.

BLESS SHOP BERLIN
Oderberger Strasse 60
backhouse 3rd floor 10435 Berlin
shop@blessberlin.com
--

• www.blessberlin.com

798 Art Zone is a former factory complex in Beijing now occupied by art galleries, studios, bookstores, cafés and design shops.

The complex is enormous and often referred to as Beijing's Meatpacking District, but 798 is a gated area and much more condensed and busy like an art fair.

798 has supposedly turned too mainstream for some local artists and galleries who have instead moved to Caochangdi some 5 kilometers further out of the city, but even on a freezing cold Saturday in mid-January where every second place was closed (due to holidays?), there were still some good things to see and experience.

From a personal perspective, the most inspiring exhibition was Twelve Chinese Artists at Iberia Center for Contemporary Art and in particular the conceptual works Go Home Project and True Fighter - two completely different works about identity and role playing.

The first one, Go Home Project, is an anthropological experiment, in which the artist Pak Sheung Chuen asked museum-goers to take him to their homes. The project plays with the duality between viewer and creator and a wall of photographs shows the artist socializing with the strangers at their homes, in restaurants and on the streets as if they were best friends.

The second one, True Fighter, is an installation by Feng Mengbo inspired classic Kung Fu arcade-games. In Feng's version of the game, all characters are replaced by Feng and his friends. Feng himself is an obsessive online gamer and his works have been shown at PS1 in New York and at Ars Electronica in Linz.

Another gallery worth recommending is UCCA: Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, which also features performances, talks, music and workshops. There are simply lots of things to see (but do a bit of research if you plan to go) and if you are into more traditional Chinese crafts, such as sweatshop-produced paper cuts, you'll find a place for that too.

• 798 Art Zone

Forgot your camera? Missed a photo-opportunity? Wanted to share that missed moment with the rest of the world?

Here's your chance to fix the problem.

Simply go to fixr.org and submit a text describing the missed moment and it will published on the website.

Furthermore, the best moments are printed on posters and shown in the exhibition Persistence of Vision, currently taking place at Kunsthal Nikolaj in Copenhagen and then later at FACT in Liverpool.

fixr is a project by Sascha Pohflepp and Jakob Schillinger.

• www.fixr.org

For John Lennon's birthday, October 9th, Yoko Ono is asking Twitter users to make a peace-wish and tweet it to @IPTower.

@IPTower is the Twitter profile of The Imagine Peace Tower, which is a light sculpture located in Iceland. The tower consists of strong lights that are beamed vertically into the sky from a 10-meter wide wishing well. It was conceived by Yoko Ono in 2007 and dedicated to John Lennon.

Tweets to @IPTower are shown at the website www.imaginepeacetower.com. Wishes can also be send as postcards or emails.

• www.imaginepeacetower.com

The Speed Creating Project is a series of rapid prototypes created by artist/designer Dominic Wilcox for the recently held Anti-Design Festival in London.

A month before the festival, Dominic challenged himself to make something new each day for 30 days - it could be an object, an installation or a creative intervention. He would receive a small budget of £10 for materials each day.

The self-imposed dogma, with is constraints on time and money, forced him into taking a highly instinctive and experimental approach. In perfect harmony with the the Anti Design theme, complete failures were expected and embraced.

Apparently, not all prototypes made it in time for the Festival, but they are documented on his own blog. Don't miss Bread Vases, Beach Ball Chair, Workercise and The Football Smoothie Maker.

• Speed Creating Project on: variationsonnormal.com

Basketball hoop installed at the Tobacco Factory in Linz.

The installation, titled Never Ever, is created by German artist Benjamin Bergmann.

• www.benjaminbergmann.de