FutureEverything award winner receives £10,000

MEDIA RELEASE COURTESY OF: FUTUREEVERYTHING AWARD

The EyeWriter has today, Friday 12 March 2010, been chosen as the winner of the first FutureEverything Award, a £10,000 prize set up by FutureEverything to celebrate the creative imagination that will shape our future.

The EyeWriter is a pair of low-cost eye-tracking glasses that allow artists and graffiti writers with paralysis to draw using only their eyes. Inspired by Tony Quan, a graffiti writer, social activist and publisher who was diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (AML) in 2003, The EyeWriter is the result of a collaboration with five other artists and a production company. It is an ongoing project to empower people suffering from degenerative neuromuscular diseases with creative technologies.

Tony Quan comments: ‘Art is a tool of empowerment and social change, and I consider myself blessed to be able to create and use my work to promote health reform, bring awareness about ALS and help others.’

The EyeWriter was chosen as winner following an online vote by a world-wide community of FutureEverything artists and participants from the past 15 years. The EyeWriter beat two other shortlisted projects: Open_Sailing, an international community trying to develop the International_Ocean_Station as an open-source project, developing hardware and software to enable intelligent human activities at sea; and Amphibious Architecture, a visual interface floating on the water's surface, creating a looking glass into the aquatic ecosystem.

The shortlist was selected by an international jury, who chose from a longlist of 20 taken from over 1,000 submissions. The jury, chaired by Colin Fallows, Professor of Sound and Visual Arts and Liverpool John Moores University Board Director for FutureEverything, comprised: Steve Dietz, Artistic Director of 01SJ Biennial and Executive Director of Northern Lights; Gunalan Nadarajan, Director of ISEA Singapore & Vice Provost at MICA; Maria Balshaw, Director of the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester.

Drew Hemment, Director of FutureEverything comments: ‘We were delighted with the high calibre and diversity of submissions for the debut FutureEverything Award, which was launched to celebrate outstanding innovation in art, society and technology. This year’s winner demonstrates extraordinary creativity, imagination and ingenuity.’

The winning candidate will receive a £10,000 cash prize and the FutureEverything Trophy, presented at the Awards Ceremony, a Gala event staged during the FutureEverything festival from 12 to 15 May.