Awards

Two women (Chicks on Speed) and Peter Weibel on Stage

Since its foundation in 1989, the ZKM has been presenting awards in areas at the interface of art, technology and science and is oriented towards current developments in technology and society.

The »Siemens Media Arts Prize«, which has been awarded since 1992, focused on media art and early computer-based works. The annual Hertz Award is still a unique prize in the field of electronic acoustic music. Initiated in 2011, the AppArtAward honored applications until 2017 that were distinguished by a special artistic concept and design but did not gain visibility in the AppStores due to the lack of a category such as »art«. In 2018, the AppArtAward is replaced by the HASH! Award, which honors net-based projects in the fields of art, technology and design within the framework of web residencies, expanding the scope for artistic reflection against the background of digitization.

Current Awards

What are international Internet creatives working on? What topics drive their work? What are their questions? And what artistic answers to developments in technology, society, and the Internet do they provide? The Hash award honors net-based projects in the fields of art, technology, and design...

Since 2007, the Giga-Hertz Award for electronic music has been promoting young musicians and honoring established artists whose musical works have had a decisive influence on the development of new music. The prize is jointly awarded by the ZKM and the Freiburg EXPERIMENTAL-STUDIO of the SWR.

Past Awards

Since 2011, the AppArtAward has annually honored the best artistic developments in the area of applications for smartphones and tablets. The idea came about in view of the fact »that AppStores do not fall under the category ‘art‘, and that consequently, artistic and highly innovative developments enjoy only marginal value.«

In 1992, the ZKM and the Siemens Cultural Program jointly launched the international Siemens Media Arts Prize. The prize honored outstanding audiovisual artists, individual works of art or theoretical-analytical works that explicitly used the new media or critically examined them.

In 1992, the ZKM and Südwestfunk Baden-Baden (SWF) donated the Deutscher Videokunstpreis [German Video Art Prize]. It was the first prize for media art to be awarded in cooperation between a television station and a cultural institution.