2026 Experiential Innovation
Award Finalists
For works that prioritize experience, whether subtle or immersive, engaging audiences through participation, presence, sensation, or environment, including live coding, performance, interactive installations, experiential VR/AR, and cross-modal practices across physical, digital, or hybrid forms. This category focuses on how a work is encountered or activated, rather than the specific technologies or formats used. Any artist whose work evokes presence, engagement, or interaction is eligible.
DIYAUTO ORCHESTRA
Simon Lazarus 84
DIYAUTO ORCHESTRA is an installation by visual artist Simon Lazarus and musician S8jfou, combining a generative audiovideo mural with biomaterial sculpture-instruments, inviting the public to put in dialogue living objects (micro-organisms) with living programs (generative code).
Alternative Computations — Worlds Otherwise Calculated
Ryuta Aoki
Quantum noise becomes rain in a universe inspired by vernacular cultures of computation. Rods trace the 28 Lunar Mansions; tatami and reeds ground sky, earth and human. Embodied ritual gestures attune the installation. Every 28 minutes, a sonic ecology is reborn.
Detective Deduction
CHOU Man-nung
An immersive world built from a theater's own machinery, where audiences become detectives of their own perception.
Mirror Into Auntieverse
niceaunties
An interactive Napoleon III mirror that replaces your reflection with a speaking auntie from the Auntieverse, using motion capture and real-time rendering to transform vanity into an encounter with ageing, identity and “auntie love language”.
Situational Compliance
Matthew Biederman
An AI system plays Simon Says, leveraging computer vision to examine public surveillance. Participants perform increasingly authoritarian commands as the work exposes its technical apparatus, revealing how surveillance systems judge compliance and how readily we surrender agency