KARLSRUHE.- The Giga-Hertz Award 2022 was presented at the ZKM | Karlsruhe. Winner of the main prize of € 10,000 is Daniel Teruggi. The new PopExperimental Advancement Award goes to the Ugandan collective Nyege Nyege.

Each year, since 2007, the ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe presents the Giga-Hertz Award for electronic music and sound art, in collaboration with the SWR Experimental Studio. Previous award winners include Pierre Boulez, Brian Eno, Laurie Anderson, and Christina Kubisch. This year, the the Argentinian composer and longtime director of the INA GRM (Groupe de recherches musicales ) in Paris, Daniel Teruggi, will receive the Main Award, endowed with €10,000. The Production Awards, each endowed with €5,000, will go to the sound and multimedia artist Yu-Jung Chen from Taiwan and to Peter Gahn, Professor of Composition/New Media/Sound Studies at the Hochschule für Musik in Nuremberg. A new award category is the PopExperimental Advancement Award of € 5,000, which will be given to the Nyege Nyege collective from Uganda. The collective promotes electronic underground music by African artists. The award ceremony took place on Saturday, November 26, 2022 at the ZKM | Karlsruhe, and was accompanied by a comprehensive concert program on November 26 and 27, 2022.

As one of the most important international prizes for electronic music and sound art, the ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe and the SWR Experimental Studio Freiburg will present the Giga-Hertz Award, endowed with € 25,000, for the 15th time on November 26, 2022. The prize includes a Main Award for lifetime achievement, two Production Awards and, a new category this year, the PopExperimental Advancement Award.

The winner of the €10,000 Giga-Hertz Main Award 2022 is the composer Daniel Teruggi from Argentina. Teruggi is the composer of more than 90 works, mainly for concerts, that feature either electroacoustic devices in acousmatic settings or live instruments. His works have been performed in over 30 countries and released in various CD collections. From 2001 to 2016, Daniel Teruggi was also the technical director of the Department for Research and Experiment of the INA (Institut national de l'audiovisuel) in Paris. In his research, he worked on preserving audiovisual collections especially in the field of electroacoustic music. He is the author of numerous research articles on sound, perception, and the analysis of music.

The two Production Awards, each endowed with €5,000, go to sound and multimedia artist Yu-Jung Chen, who lives in Tainan, Taiwan, and to Peter Gahn, who since 2015 teaches and conducts research as Professor of Composition/New Media/Sound Studies at the Hochschule der Musik in Nuremberg.

The new PopExperimental Advancement Award is dedicated to popular music-oriented aesthetics, which are currently among the most significant technologically based drivers of innovation in electronic music. The award, also endowed with € 5,000, is sponsored by the Society for the Promotion of the ZKM / HfG.

The first winner of this new category is the Ugandan collective Nyege Nyege, which promotes electronic underground music by African artists. Nyege Nyege explores new cross-border ways to provide a forum and holistic platform for an emerging, creative generation.

Honorable Mentions go to U.S. composer Timothy Roy, Germany-based Colombian composer, sound and media artist Claudia Robles-Angel, and Oslo-based Hungarian sound experimenter Bálint Laczkó.

This year, for the first time since 2019, the award ceremony took place once again with an audience, moderated by Nina Sonnenberg, and embedded in an extensive concert program.

Members of the 2022 Juries

Main Award and Production Awards: Ludger Brümmer (Program Director of Music, ZKM | Karlsruhe and Professor of Composition for Digital Media, Hochschule für Musik Trossingen), Huihui Cheng (composer), Detlef Heusinger (Artistic Director Ensemble Experimental & Head of the SWR Experimental Studio until Sept. 2022), Elsa Justel (composer), and Peter Weibel (Artistic and Scientific Director, ZKM | Karlsruhe).

PopExperimental: Udo Dahmen (Artistic Director and Managing Director of the Popakademie Baden-Württemberg and vice president of the German Music Council), Zuri Maria Daiß (music curator and freelance cultural worker including for the CTM Festival), Stefanie Schäfer (music editor at SWR3 – Southwest Broadcasting), and Nahuel Stoppa (pop culture editor of ARTE TRACKS Berlin).