Press Release
Silver A' Design Award in Installation Design Goes to Cryptographic Beings Artwork by Michael Sedbon
The international grand jury of the 2022 - 2023 A' Design Award & Competition recognizes Michael Sedbon for installation design
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
COMO, Italy, April 20, 2023 /DesignNewswire/ Cryptographic Beings Artwork by Michael Sedbon has been granted the Silver A' Design Award in the Installation Design category, A' Design Award & Competition has announced. The award was conferred within the 2022 - 2023 A' Design Award & Competition and was reached through blind peer review by an international grand jury panel of established academics, design professionals and press members, who scored anonymized entries against predetermined criteria.
What the Silver A' Design Award Means
The Silver A' Design Award celebrates top-tier designs that embody excellence and innovation. This award acknowledges creations that are not only aesthetically pleasing but also highly functional, reflecting the designer's deep understanding and skill. Silver A' Design Award recipients are recognized for their contribution to raising industry standards and advancing the practice of design. Their work often incorporates original innovations and elicits a strong emotional response, making a notable impact on the improvement of everyday life.
About Cryptographic Beings Artwork
Cryptographic Beings is an art installation that stores digital data in living algae. The work consists of thirty vegetal bits, each one a glass vessel holding filamentous algae. Photosynthesis produces gas vesicles, so the algae float in light and sink in darkness. Each floating or sinking state represents a digital zero or one, and the installation can store a five letter word. Motorized robotic arms control the light reaching every vessel, and a custom colour sensor reads each state. The machine runs autonomously for months during an exhibition.
Award Record
With this recognition, Michael Sedbon is a winner of 1 A' Design Award.
About the A' Interactive, Experiential and Immersive Design Installations Award
The A' Installation Design Award is an international installation design competition recognizing good installation designs by best installation designers worldwide. It is organized within the A' Design Award & Competition and is open to installation designers, experiential design studios, interactive design agencies and immersive technology experts from all countries. Typical entries include sculptural installations, light installations, sound installations, digital installations, kinetic installations and site-specific installations. The awarded interactive installation designs are published at https://designers.org/design-category/installation
About A' Design Award & Competition
Organized annually since 2008, A' Design Award & Competition is an international, juried design accolade. The competition is open to entries from all countries. The philanthropic mission of the A' Design Award is to advance society through good design, by recognizing and promoting superior products, projects and services that benefit society, and by creating a global awareness and appreciation for good design practices and principles. Nominations are peer reviewed and evaluated anonymously by an international grand jury panel of established academics, design professionals and press members against predetermined criteria such as functionality, ergonomics, engineering, presentation, innovation, usability, sustainability and technology, with score normalization applied to remove biases. Awards are conferred at Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze and Iron levels. Eligible laureates receive the A' Design Prize, which includes the award trophy, the certificate of design excellence, the hardcover yearbook, a lifetime license to use the A' Design Award winner logo, exhibition of awarded works, an invitation to the gala night and award ceremony in Italy, inclusion in the World Design Rankings and Designer Rankings, and public relations and publicity services. Registration, uploading a work and receiving a preliminary score are free of charge, and Professional and Digital Edition laureates are not contractually obliged to pay further fees to claim the A' Design Prize. More information is available at https://competition.adesignaward.com
Press Resources
- Winner Page: https://designers.org/146928
- A' Design Award Page: https://competition.adesignaward.com/146928
- Media Showcase: https://www.designnewsroom.com/!146928
- Laureate Profile: https://designers.org/d/339772
- Further Information from the Laureate: https://michaelsedbon.com/
Media Contact
Giulia Ferrari, Press Office
Designers.Org
Via Leone Leoni 32, 22100 Como, Italy
press@designers.org
+39 031 4491953
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Fact Sheet
The Work
- Project
- Cryptographic Beings Artwork
- Function
- Artwork
- Category
- Installation Design
- Discipline
- Communication Design
- Industry
- Arts and Branding & Advertising
- Colors
- Black, Dark Slate Gray, Dim Gray and Dark Olive Green
- Images
- 5
The Recognition
- Laureate
- Michael Sedbon
- Recognition
- Silver A' Design Award
- Edition
- 2022 - 2023
- Design ID
- #146928
Design Details
- Unique Properties
- Cryptographic Beings is a technological proposal that leverages our ability to control and abstract biology to perform digital information storage. Marimos are large spherical colonies of algea. Photosynthetic activity produces gas vesicles visible to the naked eye This property allows them to float when exposed to light and sink in the dark This property is used to store digital data: The floating or sinking state representing digital 0s or 1s This robotic setup is capable of storing a 5 letter word
- Inspiration
- The first part of the 20th century witnessed simultaneously the discovery of the basis of information storage in DNA and the revolutions of the modern computing era. Since then, the fields of computer science and modern biology have co-evolved in a conceptual framework that looks at life as an information processing system and at digital computations as Intelligence. This cultural relationship is allowing us to design new kinds of bio-hybrid computers leveraging the massive capacity of life.
- Research
- Living organisms perceive and interact with their environment through computation. Recent advances in the life sciences allow researchers and designers to envision machines of new kinds that leverage the massive and specific capacities of living matter in computing. How would these bio-hybrid machines change our perception of nature and culture, what can be used to compute, what can be computed and what form will they take? These are the question this work approach.
- Challenge
- Cryptographic being is both a technological and an artistic proposal. The technology used to store digital information in vegetal media is a pure creation for this work. During its development, numerous technical challenges such as the design of custom sensors and engineered mechanical parts had to be overcome. As an artistic project, it also had to communicate its (highly technical) subject in an understandable manner. Great care was placed in rendering biological processes visible.
- Realization and Technology
- This work was developed as part of an ongoing research project on bio-hybrid computation exploring the possible morpho-space of computing devices. Michael Sedbon questions the information-processing properties of living matter through the creation of novel technologies embed into sculptural artefacts. This work has been developed as a functional prototype of a digital data storage device on vegetal media. It uses living algae, custom electronic and software code to store information.
- Operation and Interaction
- This autonomous machine consists of an array of 30 vegetal bits made of filamentous algae held in glass vessels. The control of the information flow is handled by a set of specifically developed robotic arms that control photosynthetic processes in each of the bits. The state of each bit (the digital information) is retrieved by a custom-made device based on a colour sensor. The machine is designed to run autonomously for months throughout an exhibition.
- Project Duration and Location
- The project was conceptualised and prototyped in summer 2021. The production occurred from September 2021 to March 2022. This work was shown at Au Dela Des Pixel, a digital art exhibition curated and organised by 36 Degres, in March 2022 in Paris.
- Specifications
- Width : 60 cm height : 300 cm Depth : 60 cm Weight : 300 Kg
- Keywords
- Artificial Living Intelligence, Synthetic Biology, Bio-Hybrid Computers, Living Machines, New Media Art, Robotic
