GML Gets Mozilla Open Web Award at Transmediale 10 in Berlin

Jesse Scott (Graffiti Research Labs), center, accepts the Open Web Award on behalf of Evan Roth. Right: Mark Surman, Director, Mozilla Foundation, Left: Henrik Moltke (European Project Lead, Mozilla Drumbeat).

Here’s the official Mozilla post. Congratulations to Evan Roth, the GML team and community, and to the open web!

Mozilla is moving beyond software, looking for ways to bring the technologies and culture that underlie Firefox into new areas like art, media and education. The Open Web Award was the first dip of our toes into combining digital art and the open web, and we’re excited to dive further in. With our new Mozilla Drumbeat initiative, we are engaging creators globally to shape the future of the web. This is not done by what some of you might call ‘nerds’ and what we call developers. You are the future of the web, and we need your help to keep it open, avesome and available for everyone to play with.

We were excited to see more than 100 submissions for the Transmediale Open Web Award. The jury narrowed it down to three great contributions that all show potential, and could be seeds for incredibly exciting developments for art and the web in the coming years.
The winner – Graffiti Markup Language – enables the capture of graffiti motion data and turns it into something that can be shared and manipulated indefinitely. One can imagine not only great and exciting graffiti art but all kinds of motion expression. Just like the web itself, the potential of GML is totally open ended. Anyone can – like LEGO – built whatever they want with it. For Mozilla, GML also has great educational value because it explains open data and standards in a surprising and fresh way to new people. We congratulate Evan Roth and the GML community on winning the award.

We  also want to award a distinction to the other two finalists, Booki and Thimbl. Like GML, they represent exciting opportunities for creative expression on the web. Next week we launch the new Mozilla Drumbeat website. We will feature all three of these projects. We look forward to working together with everyone involved.