Table of Contents

The Powsolo awards are part of the Powland Network which also includes Powcademy and Coleccion SOLO and is based in Espacio SOLO museum in Madrid Spain. The Powsolo awards are a set of awards given for sound sculptures.

Competition

The competition is held online through video submissions that are submitted the prior year. The event is a digital competition with no physical awards ceremony.

2020

Here is the 2020 awards ceremony-


Judges

Ryuichi Sakamoto 坂本龍一

Finalists

Nolan Lem - Menagerie
Ioana Vreme Moser - Fluid Memory
David Gardener & Greg Debicki - Empty Vessels
Enrico Ascoli & Hilario Asola - Auspicio
Enrique del Castillo - Phonoptic readers
Dmitry Morozov - Floating Point Number
Adrian Aroko - Enfardo
Sergey Filatov - ElectroLire
Michele Spangero - Ad Lib
Marco Barotti - The Egg.

Notes

Powsolo website 1)
Facebook page 2)

The Powsolo awards are are very limited in the scope of sound work that qualifies under their rules. The works need to be fully independent of user interaction, and seemingly cannot be allowed to be objects that are interacted with by the artist or the audience in any direct way during their presentation in an art space. It seems that the award is intended to not allow a musical instrument (as an object that is interacted with by a performer) as an option in any way.

This also means that is it very difficult to build a non-electronic sculpture that qualifies for the award. In the case of the finalists in 2020 only one lacks electronics (Auspicio built by Enrico Ascoli & Hilario Asola) and two are electric but without electronics (Michele Spangero's Ad Lib) and (Ioana Vreme Moser's Fluid Memory which probably is not an electronic sculpture). I find this requirement a little unsettling and I think that the competition is coded as one for electronic instruments but calling itself an award for sound sculpture in general, which is an inappropriate conflation. I can think of alot of work that is a sound sculpture but requires some kind of interaction from the audience to function, and are sound sculptures that have no electronic components, because the sound making function is powered by the interaction itself.