Eurographics presented the John Lansdown Prize for Multimedia for the first time at the Eurographics 2000 conference. This year the prize is renamed the Prize for Interactive Digital Art, to better describe the kind of entry that the judges are looking for.

The prize is dedicated to the memory of Professor John Lansdown, who died in February 1999. In his varied career, John Lansdown was involved in many creative activities, from his first discipline of architecture, through computer graphics to computer-mediated artwork of many forms, culminating in multimedia production. Creativity is an overworked word, but it can be justly applied to John Lansdown's approach to everything he explored, so the criteria for the award centre on the creative use of computers to generate interactive art.

The results of the competition will be announced at Eurographics 2006 in Vienna in September 2006. A certificate will accompany the cheque.

The judges look forward to receiving a stimulating set of submissions and wish all submitters good luck with their research and development work.

The submission awarded first prize will demonstrate innovation in the use of interaction with images, sound and animation. The judges will take into account whether the work looks and sounds good and behaves well, the strength of the underlying ideas and the degree to which the system works both conceptually and mechanically, in other words the fitness for purpose of the submission. A successful work will show a significant understanding of the needs, motivations, conceptions and actions of the user.

Fundamental characteristics that the judges will expect to find in a successful submission include:

• Innovation
• Coherence
• Selectivity or appropriateness
• Usability
• Usefulness
• Fertility for development
• Degree of finish
• Meeting declared aims
• Awareness of state of the art
• Technical ingenuity

The judges reserve the right to make no award or to award only a second prize if, in their opinion, the standard of work submitted does not reach the high standards of creativity associated with John Lansdown. The judges decision is final. They may, at their discretion, give private advice or comments to submitters of work on future development, but will not openly discuss their decisions nor respond to direct questioning on the reasons for decisions after the award ceremony.

A submission may be made by companies, Universities, Research organisations, individuals in short anyone from any country in the world. The work must be submitted on CD-ROM or DVD (five copies). The submission should be accessible using standard software on standard equipment (for example, Mozilla Firefox, Netscape Navigator, Microsoft Explorer, Adobe Acrobat on PC and/or Macintosh platforms). If specialist plug-ins or Xtras are needed, arrangements to download these should be made clear in the submission. If the work is a web site, a disk copy should be submitted. If the work is an installation, it is acceptable to submit a video describing the work and including a tour through the work. Videos may be submitted on CD-ROM or DVD. Entries that run on mobile devices should also be submitted as video, e.g. by capturing the screens.

Submissions should be received by the Chairman of the judges, David Duce, on or before 28 April 2006. Submissions received after this closing time will not be considered.

Each submission should contain:

1. the name, address, telephone, FAX, email and company or university affiliation (when relevant) of a contactable submitter, as well as a signed and dated statement indicating willingness to accept the rules of the competition and for Eurographics to have the right to use extracts from the work for publicity purposes;
2. the names, addresses and affiliations of any collaborators, plus a signed and dated statement from each indicating their agreement that the work should be submitted to the competition and that they accept the competition rules;
3. TWO signed copies of the Licence to Use Agreement. One copy, signed by Eurographics, will be returned to you;
4. a brief statement (no more than one A4 page) indicating the aims and status of the work (for example, commercial product, joint or individual student project, proof of concept development, etc.);
5. complete operating instructions for the work, to include any special requirements of the operating platform and/or software.