Now on view at iMAL in Brussels: Navid Navab, winner of the Golden Nica prize in Digital Musics & Sound Art at Prix Ars Electronica 2025
iMAL, the Brussels art centre for digital cultures and technology, is currently presenting I am vertical (but I would rather be horizontal), a group exhibition reflecting on iMAL’s 25 years of history and looking towards its future as an institution dedicated to digital cultures, at a time when computation is increasingly scrutinised for its social and environmental impact.
One of the works is the sound installation Organism + Excitable Chaos, by Navid Navab, created in collaboration with Garnet Willis. This work has just been awarded the Golden Nica in the category Digital Musics & Sound Art at the Prix Ars Electronica 2025.
The Prix Ars Electronica, initiated in 1987, is the world’s longest-running and most prestigious media art competition, acting as a central hub in the global network of media art. It annually honors outstanding projects at the intersection of art, technology, and society, with Golden Nica winners selected by an international jury and awarded €10,000 along with a prominent presentation at the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria.
This year, the jury for the Digital Musics & Sound Art category was composed of musicologist and sound artist Miriam Akkermann, curator Dietmar Lupfer, music curator and writer Kamila Metwaly, and multidisciplinary artist and AI-music researcher Ali Nikrang.
The awarded work, Organism + Excitable Chaos, consists of a robotically prepared century-old Casavant pipe organ animated by a robotically-steered triple pendulum. The chaotic motion of Excitable Chaos—a system of three pendulum arms driven by gravitational dynamics and an electromagnetic driver—modulates the aerodynamic thresholds of Organism, creating turbulent sonifications through a continuous exchange of energy and chaotic movement. The work has two modes of presentation: the concert Organism: In Turbulence, a solo performance by Navab using gestural controllers and a prepared organ to explore metastable sonic states, and the installation Organism + Excitable Chaos. Through the reconfiguration of the organ’s pneumatic architecture, historically designed to suppress instability, the artists unlock long-repressed timbres and allow sonic turbulence to emerge as a central compositional element.
The international jury said: “The work unfolds as a continuously evolving encounter between a historical artefact and nonlinear material objects found today. Sound is not composed in the traditional sense but arises through friction, drift, and transductive resonance. The pendulum’s gravitational system triggers delicate sonic responses—shimmering, unpredictable, and emergent—inviting the audience into an experience of instability, chance, and emergence.”
"When thinking of the historical context, the work subtly taps into the colonial legacies of the pipe organ—an instrument historically ejected into public spaces through the spread of Christianity. [...] It seems that, Organism become a subversive apparatus—an act of sonic reclamation. Through the radical recontextualization, the artists dismantle the organ’s fixed authority and repurpose it to a state of responsive, chaotic life. This is not simply a reinvention of an instrument, but a re-imagining of time, space, and historical memory. The jury recognizes the work as a profound and poetic gesture—an invitation to listen differently, and to reclaim what was silenced through resonance, care, and embodied presence."
More information about the exhibition at iMAL here.
About iMAL
iMAL is a cultural organisation, located in Molenbeek, Brussels, combining the roles of an Art Center and a Lab. It is a meeting place between different communities with a special attention to the local scene. iMAL's 25th anniversary marks the beginning of a broader reflection on resilience, resistance to the dominant definition of progress, and the responsibility of fostering solidarity.
iMAL supports artistic practices that critically engage with digital technologies. It is a meeting place between different communities with a special attention to the local scene. We propose a multi-voiced and transdisciplinary approach to contemporary issues through our program consisting of exhibitions, research and production residencies, reflection and training, and public engagement.
iMAL also has its own workshop, the iMAL Fablab, where residencies take place every year. The Fablab also has its own public access system, with the aim of making technology accessible to all without distinction.
In the coming years, iMAL will explore the degrowth of computation and aims to emphasize the importance of regenerative production ecosystems.
About the Prix Ars Electronica
The Prix Ars Electronica is the world’s longest-running media art competition. It highlights international artistic practices at the intersection of art, technology, and society, serving as a reference point for current developments in the field. Winners are awarded the Golden Nica, receive up to 10,000 euros per category, and present their work at the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria. Initiated in 1987 by Hannes Leopoldseder and organised by Ars Electronica Linz GmbH & CoKG with support from the City of Linz, the Prix is announced anew each year and remains a vital platform for presenting contemporary artistic work to an international jury of experts.
About Navid Navab
Navid Navab (IR/CA) is an antidisciplinary composer and media alchemist with a background in contemporary music, biomedical sonification, and philosophical biology. His investigative ArtScience practice stages forms of order by imbuing machines with liveliness through fusion with the excitable dynamics of matter. His works engage with transductive structures of liveliness, orchestrating sensory attunement to forms of life suspended in metastable states and cybernetically enfolding their excitable dynamics.
