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A working art installation that continuously develops by printing new selfies on long streams of paper has won the Digital Portraiture Award for 2017.
The work, titled Selfie Factory, consists of five machines that print selfies directly from Instagram using #selfie.
Creators Ralph Kenke and Elmar Trefz describe the experimental art installation as "a temporary visual experience exploring online behaviour".
"Selfie Factory was always intended to be situated in a public or exhibition space to attract people while they use their smart phone to explore and contribute to the work," Mr Kenke said.
In addition to $10,000 in prize money and an artistic residency at the State Library of Queensland's community makerspace, the work will go on show at the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra for the next two months.
Mr Kenke and Mr Trefz said they hoped their winning entry enabled an audience to engage in dialogue about "the experienced divide between online spaces and physical places".
"We believe that the discourse on how the virtual social media world impacts physical real society is highly relevant and barely understood," Mr Trefz said.
"Our hypothesis is that it creates a new type of reality, which we refer to as Telematic Reality, and this is what we are aiming to probe with works such as the Selfie Factory."
Judge Daniel Flood said out of a large number of entries and nine finalists, Selfie Factory was selected for its use of new media and live computation.
"The work explores the global phenomena of portraiture practice in the form of the selfie and directly engages its audience in its ongoing creative process," Mr Flood said.
One of the shortlisted entries, Blek Bala MJ, features a young Yolngu man slipping between the dance styling of Michael Jackson and his culture's traditional dance.
In a statement the artist Timothy Hillier said both dancing styles were taught to Danzel Baker at a young age by his father.
Another finalist entry, titled Eileen, is a moving portrait of dancer Eileen Kramer, who at 103 years old, continues to create and perform.
Artist Sue Healey details Ms Kramer extensive history in dance in her artist's statement — beginning when Ms Kramer joined Australia's first modern dance company in 1939.
She then spent years living in India, Europe and America before returning to Sydney in 2014.
A painted portrait of Ms Kramer, by surgeon Dr Andrew Greensmith, was a finalist in the 2017 Archibald Prize.
Topics: contemporary-art, arts-and-entertainment, canberra-2600, act, australia
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