'Warrior's of the Net' takes Pirelli award
Swedish company, Ericsson Medialab scooped first prize at the Pirelli INTERNETional awards for 'Warriors of the Net', an animated movie illustrating how the Internet works. The team of four animators, designers and composers collected their 15,000 euro prize money at a ceremony for the international multimedia awards in Rome, Italy, on 11 April 2000. The jury, which includes Nobel Prizewinner Ilya Prigogine and George Metakides, a director from the EU's Information Society Directorate-General, made their choice; 'For the highly successful effort in explaining the functioning of the Internet by utilising state-of-the-art multimedia tools: high level screenplay, graphics and original subject have made this work one of the most powerful examples of contemporary art.' Presenting the international awards, first launched in 1996, Carlos Buora, Pirelli Director General, said: 'The INTERNETional award gives a valuable contribution to the online diffusion of scientific culture, and is a prime example of Pirelli's unceasing attention to the 'Web Revolution'.' Entries were judged for originality, relevance to the theme, social and economic impact, scientific rigour, artistic level and international scope. The University of Colorado in Boulder, USA won the second prize with 'Physics 2000', an interactive journey through modern physics, while third prize went to the University of São Paulo, Brazil with a Website on Human Sexuality. CAB International, a British non-profit organisation, took the Environmental prize with 'Crop Protection Compendium', a CD-ROM containing science-based information on crop protection. The Zoology Department of the University of Guelph in Canada was awarded a schools prize for an extract of the CD-ROM 'Mammals, Amphibians, and Reptiles of the Great Lakes.' The CD-ROM prize was awarded to a Californian software house in Santa Barbara, USA, for 'The Atomic Archive', a work exploring the complex history of the making of the atomic bomb. The ceremony ended with the official launching of the fifth edition of the Pirelli INTERNETional Award.