Since 1987, the Prix Ars Electronica have offered awards to recognise the use of computers as a medium for implementing and designing creative projects that blend art, technology, and society. The prizes are awarded during the Ars Electronica Festival each year.

The Prix Ars Electronica calls for entries and awards prizes in the following categories:

• Computer Animation / Film / Visual Effects
• Interactive Art
• Digital Musics
• Hybrid Art
• Digital Communities
• u19 - freestyle computing
• [The Next Idea] Art and Technology Grant
• Media.Art.Research Award

The Digital Communities category is an example of the blend art, technology, and society being sought for this award. From the website:

"The "Digital Communities" category will honor important achievements by digital communities as well as innovative artistic approaches towards web-based communities. This category focuses attention on the wide-ranging social and artistic impact of the Internet as well as on the latest developments in the fields of social software, ubiquitous computing, mobile communications and wireless networks. Special attention goes to community-related “net.art”. "Digital Communities" spotlights bold and inspired innovations impacting human coexistence, bridging the geographical as well as gender-based digital divide and cultural conflicts, sustaining cultural diversity and the freedom of artistic expression or creating outstanding social software and enhancing accessibility of technological-social infrastructure. This category showcases the political and artistic potential of digital and networked systems and is thus designed as a forum for the consideration of a broad spectrum of projects, programs, artworks, initiatives and phenomena in which social and artistic innovation is taking place, as it were, in real time."

The deadline for application is March 19 2008.

Click here for a description of each category, as well as eligibility and application information.