Dana-Fiona Armour Awarded 2024 Sigg Art Prize

Dana-Fiona Armour b. 1988, Germany Follow +

Paris-based German artist-researcher Dana-Fiona Armour, whose work explores the symbiosis between species, was awarded the 2024 Sigg Art Prize for a contemporary art project that incorporates AI.

Revealed at Asprey Studio in London during Frieze Week, Armour’s winning work, Alvinella Ophis, responds to the theme ‘Future Desert’ with a 3D-animated video installation set in a dystopian desert devastated by ecological disaster. There lives the hybrid species Alvinella Ophis—a combination of the Pompeii worm and the snake—symbolising evolutionary resilience and probing the significance of humanity in a non-anthropocentric world.

Modelled after the heat-sensing capacities of a python’s organs, interactive infrared sensors can detect the species’ thermal presence. The resulting data is processed by an AI programme to create dynamic visual responses, accompanied by a quadrophonic soundscape.

Armour was one of seven finalists—including Obaid Alsafi, Léa Collet, Agnieszka Kurant (with John Menick), Harrison Pearce, Aaron Scheer, and Sasha Stiles—selected from over 300 applicants. All finalists were awarded a four-week residency in Southern France at Le Castellet.

Submissions were judged based on technological integration, innovation, creativity, and artistic impact. Other factors like engagement with social issues and diversity representation were also considered.

An AI judge was among the jury of nine, analysing the visual and textual features of entries using machine learning models and computer vision. The programme evaluated the originality of artists’ approaches to the theme and their use of technology and art historical references.

The machine’s findings were given equal footing to assessments by critic and 15th Gwangju Biennale director Nicolas Bourriaud; Joseph Fowler, Head of Art and Culture at the World Economic Forum; and writer and philosopher Anna Longo, among others.

The Sigg Art Prize is an initiative aimed at redefining the boundaries of artistic creation through the integration of artificial intelligence.

According to Sigg Art Foundation, ‘AI is a transformative force, as profound as the emergence of photography during the industrial revolution.’ Founded by Swiss collector Pierre Sigg in 2020, the non-profit organisation supports the development of ideas and artists that ’[challenge] historical and artistic conventions through digital and technological innovation’. —[O]

Main image: Dana-Fiona Armour. Courtesy the artist.