The Lumen Prize, the leading global platform showcasing artists pioneering new visual languages at the intersection of art and technology, has announced the winners of its 14th annual awards at a ceremony held at Kunstsilo.
This year’s winners represent the most innovative and conceptually rich practices at the intersection of art, technology, and culture, selected from a record-breaking 2,200+ submissions from 71 countries and a shortlist of 99 finalists.
“This year’s winners remind us that art made with technology can be deeply human, emotionally resonant, politically urgent, and alive to the complexities of our changing world,”
said Gillian Leitten, CEO of The Lumen Prize.
“Their works reflect a profound shift in how creativity engages with computation, storytelling, and the
environment.”
The finalists were curated by the largest International Selectors Committee (ISC) in the Prize’s history of over 85 experts from leading global institutions, including The V&A Museum, Tate, Sotheby’s, Christie’s, Google, NVIDIA, Sónar +D, and the Onassis Foundation. The final winners were chosen by a distinguished Jury Panel composed of industry leaders from The V&A, PHI, Furtherfield, and Goldsmiths.
The 13 awards were presented at a ceremony at Kunstsilo, an award-winning, former grain silo on Odderøya in Kristiansand, Norway, that has been transformed into one of Northern Europe’s most innovative powerhouses for art and cultural experiences. The awards weekend also included the unveiling of a new site-specific work from previous Lumen Prize winner Lab212.
The 2025 awards cycle introduced four new categories: Performance & Music, Literature & Poetry, Fashion & Design, and Hybrid (Digital/Physical), designed to reflect the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of digital art practices.
2025 Lumen Prize Winners
Gold Award Cumulus — MORAKANA (Tiri Kananuruk & Sebastián Morales), USA
In a time of fear and deportations, Cumulus monitors the Mexico-US border, tracking clouds via NOAA
satellites. Inspired by CubeSats, it contrasts shifting skies with rigid politics, revealing borders as invisible from above but deeply shaping lives below.
Moving Image Award This is not your Garden — Carlos Velandia and Angélica Restrepo, Columbia
Rooted in wetlands, páramos and centennial forests at the verge of disappearing, memories and a speculated future collide. 500 years of exploitation, exile and resilience are nourished by a collective pain and a desire to crack through it all.
Literature & Poetry Award
WORDS BEYOND WORDS — Sasha Stiles, USA
WORDS BEYOND WORDS is an infinite poem that explores, expresses & embodies the evolving dialogue
between language and technology, author and algorithm — powered by a custom generative system
built to invoke an emergent AI poet & transform the browser window into a dynamic book.
Experiential Award Deutsch / Nicht Deutsch — mots (Daniela Nedovescu and Octavian Mot), Germany
DEUTSCH / NICHT DEUTSCH playfully questions the boundaries of identity and belonging, handing over all decisions to artificial intelligence. The installation invites participants to undergo a process where biased AI models determine if they are ‘German’ or ‘Not German’.
Nature & Climate Award self-contained — Entangled Others, Portugal
self-contained is the mutation of digital images as DNA: crossbreeding, mutating, and splicing random
compressed fragments, as a way of exploring encoding/decoding information as image-making. The final mutating artwork into synthesized DNA, stored in a physical capsule.
Performance & Music Award Umweltraum((a)) — Laura Mannelli and Sonia Killmann, France
Umweltraum((a)) is a nonlinear, immersive sound installation with live performance. Inspired by biologist
Jakob von Uexküll’s concepts of Umwelt and Umweltraum, it explores a mutating synthetic ecosystem questioning life, machines, and non human intelligence
Still Image Award The Sylphs — Ana María Caballero, USA
The Sylphs is from Being Borges, a poetic and (post) photographic recasting of Jorge Luis Borges &
Margarita Guerrero’s ‘Book of Imaginary Beings,’ a landmark work of Spanish literature. This series begs
the question: What’s at stake when language becomes literal via the visual?
Fashion & Design Award The SoundShirt — CuteCircuit, United Kingdom
Feel music and sound on your body as touch sensations. The SoundShirt is the first fabric-based
haptic wearable to render the full audio spectrum in realtime, connecting deaf and hearing users alike to
music, sports, and performance in emotional, immersive and surprising ways
Hybrid Award Toru — Carlo Van de Roer and Taika Waititi, USA
Toru is a three-channel video installation and interactive digital work by Carlo Van de Roer and Taika Waititi exploring mythology and new filmmaking technology to re-engage with early storytelling systems that shaped cultural memory through collaboration and reinterpretation.
Nordic Award Telos I — Emil Dam Seidel & Dorotea Saykaly, Denmark
Telos I is an immersive, holographic, mixed reality experience that explores a mythical landscape in the
digital age. ‘After the extinction of humankind an artificial intelligence creates itself a body in search of a
new purpose.’
Identity & Culture Award Organism: In Turbulence — Navid Navab, Canada
Organism is an investigative platform, revolving around a robotically-prepared historic pipe organ, that attunes us to the form-giving tendencies of kinetic chaos and the turbulent dynamics of sonic formation. It has two modes: one as an installation and another as a concert
Carla Rapoport Award a space for encapsulation — Andrey Chugunov, United Kingdom
a space for encapsulation explores Scotland’s coastlines through photogrammetry, generative sound,
and poetic narrative, documenting hybrid assemblages of natural and industrial artefacts in transient zones impacted by rising sea levels.
Special Commendation Award I WOULD LIKE TO BE MIDNIGHT / I WOULD LIKE TO BE SKY – Amelia Winger-Bearskin, USA
Recognized for her ongoing exploration of Indigenous futurism and computational storytelling,
Winger-Bearskin’s work foregrounds cultural memory and speculative worldbuilding as forms of
resistance and renewal.
Read more on the winners : HERE
This year’s awards mark a turning point for The Lumen Prize, as it deepens its curatorial and research mission through The Liminal Review: New Signals in Arts Technologies, its first annual trend publication, launched in collaboration with Sónar+D and Onassis ONX. Drawing on data and insights from over 2,200+ submissions, The Liminal Review maps the evolving landscape of digital creativity and will serve as a new benchmark for research and dialogue across the arts and technology sectors.
The 2025 edition also coincides with major international showcases:
V&A Digital Design Weekend (September 2025) — Digital Art Screening: The Lumen Prize presents Liminal, a screening of select artworks from the 2025 Lumen Prize Finalists pool.
Onassis ONX (New York, September 2025) — An evening celebrating the launch of The Liminal Review with parallel viewing of Liminal.
Kunstsilo (Norway, November 2025) — The 2025 Award Ceremony and unveiling of a site-specific installation titled, Growing, by Lumen alumni Lab212.
To date, The Lumen Prize has awarded over $125,000 in prize money since its founding in 2012, recognising more than 900 artists worldwide.
About
The Lumen Prize celebrates and promotes artists working with technology globally, providing a leading platform for those pioneering new visual languages at the intersection of art, science, and society. Past winners include Refik Anadol, Sougwen Chung, Mario Klingemann, Malitzin Cortés (CNDSD), Iván Abreu, Operator, and Casey Reas.