Dana-Fiona Armour has won the 2024 Sigg Art Prize, presented by the Sigg Art Foundation at this year’s Frieze London. Armour will receive 10,000€.
Armour’s practice explores interspecies symbiosis, in collaboration with herpetologists, to create slick, warped largescale installations and videoworks that combine biotechnology and AI data processors.
The Sigg Art Prize sets out to reward artists integrating artificial intelligence into their practice. Artists were invited to present works that fuse technology and AI with traditional visual arts. Submissions were evaluated on how effectively these elements were combined, with a focus on originality, creativity, AI integration – all according to the theme ‘Future Desert’.
In addition to the prizemoney, Armour and the six other shortlisted artists have been awarded a four-week residency at the Sigg Art Foundation’s residency in Le Castellet, France. The shortlist includes Obaid Alsafi, Léa Collet, Agnieszka Kurant in collaboration with John Menick, Harrison Pearce, Aaron Scheer, and Sasha Stiles.
Armour was selected by a jury including jury president Dominique Moulon (independent curator and art critic); Nicolas Bourriaud (artistic director, 15th Gwangju Biennale); Joseph Fowler (head of art and culture, World Economic Forum); Anna Longo (philosopher, writer and program director, Collège International de Philosophie); Seedphrase (NFT & digital art collector); Antonio Somaini (professor, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris); Anne Stenne (independent curator, cofounder and artistic director, The Feral); and Gediminas Urbonas (director, MIT Program in Art, Culture, and Technology).
Also weighing in on the decision was an AI model that analysed the artistic projects both textually and visually, using machine learning models and vision. According to the Prize, this AI model then evaluated the submissions quantitatively and qualitatively, with an emphasis on originality in tackling the theme, use of technologies, and historical art references.
