Matt Kenyon: Tardigotchi Awarded

A&D Associate Professor Matt Kenyon’s Tardigotchi is one five works in the finals for the 2011 Share Prize. There were over 250 applications in all this year. The finalists work will be exhibited in Museo di Scienze Natural in Turin Italy from November 2 ‑13, with the winner announced the exhibition’s opening ceremony on November 2.

The brand new version of the Tardigotchi project (constructed here in Ann Arbor with the help of the Duderstat’s 3D lab) also received second place, a prize of $80,000.00 pesos, at the international selection exhibition in Mexico City’s Concurso04 Transitio_​MX. The exhibition featured works by DJ Spooky and Jim Campbell among many others.

Tardigotchi features two pets: a living organism and an alife avatar who both occupy a portable brass sphere computing enclosure. The alife avatar is a caricature of the living organism, so its behaviour is partially autonomous, but it also reflects a considerable amount of expression directly from the organism’s activities (like eating).