Media artist Lee Sanghee, who goes by “Sanghee,” was awarded the New Animation Art Special Award at the 2023 Prix Ars Electronica. Sanghee is a current MA student in the Department of Multimedia in the School of Film, TV & Multimedia. The Prix Ars Electronica is an international media art competition program in the Ars Electronica Festival. Since 1987, it has annually selected the noteworthy media artists, media art groups, and media art programs of the time by granting the Golden Nica and the Award of Distinction, each of which is equivalent to the grand prize in the respective categories. 

New Animation Art is a core category that evaluates an encompassing range of visual art, mixed reality, installation, and interactive art. This year, 1,116 entries from around the world entered to compete. The jury was composed of Lev Manovich, a world-renowned digital media theorist and scholar, Mimi Son, one of the two artists from the collective Kimchi and Chips based in Seoul, curator Helen Starr, Phillippe Pasquier, a professor in generative art at the Simon Fraser University (Canada), and Nora O’ Murchú, an art director of the Transmediale in Berlin.

Sanghee’s “Oneroom-Barbel,” with VR technology, guides the audience to discover and explore the spaces in a virtual architectural structure located deep down the sea. In this experience, the audience encounters the texts composed by writers as well as those extracted from the interviews with young people who live in the one rooms, Korea's unique studio-style flat in which the bedroom, kitchen, and living room are altogether integrated into one space. The jury commented about the work as the resemblance of simple yet persuasive integration of VR technology to an artwork that succeeded in creating a strongly immersive and detailed user experience. Additionally, the work earned praise for its simplicity and efficiency in connecting the audience to Korean young people through their interviews about their vivid experiences of what it is like to live in one room. Upon award acceptance, Sanghee stated, “I worked on this project as a part of the school curriculum. I would like to thank my teachers and the School of Film, TV & Multimedia for being of great help by giving me feedback and other support while I was working on it.”