Chair of User Experience Design Predrag Nikolic Recently Selected as a crQlr Awards 2022 Winner

Aquaterrestrial Recolonization, a joint project by a group of artists based in the Bahamas including CCS Chair of User Experience Design Predrag Nikolic, is a proactive response to rising climate change concerns.

The project recorded the current state of the surrounding dead coral reefs and fed AI with that data to visualize a recolonized ocean floor; a calculated imaging, returning to the planet parts mankind has destroyed. The project uses AI as the planet Earth’s protector, from further devastations. Throughout history, human civilization has been ignorant and often motivated only by profit and exploitation. The artists were driven with the idea that maybe it is time to give to another intelligent entity, based on logic and calculations rather than being greedy and careless.

Using AI technology to generate new coral reefs, the project confronts the audience with what was lost, where the planet stands at the moment and what needs to be rebuilt to preserve our planet for the next generations.

The crQlr Awards, which are celebrating their second edition this year, are based on three criteria: “Circular, not linear” “Action, not prestige,” and “Gain from global perspectives”. In addition, a Special Prize, the “FabCafe Global Prize,” has been newly established to honor bottom-up activities aimed at empowering communities around the world.

The call for entries, which was open for approximately two and a half months, attracted 131 projects from companies, organizations, start-ups, designers, and other groups and institutions from 30 countries around the world.