Rashin Fahandej has been awarded the Prix Ars Electronica Award of Distinction in Digital Music and Sound Art for A Father’s Lullaby. The project was incubated as part of Rashin’s residency at Thoughtworks Arts.

The Prix Ars Electronica is the world’s most time-honored award in electronic and interactive art, with prize ceremonies going back more than 30 years, alongside showcases at the famed Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria.

A Father’s Lullaby is a multi-platform, community engaged interactive work that highlights the role of men in raising children and their absence due to the racial disparities in the criminal justice system with its direct impact on children, women and lower income communities.

The project is centered on marginalized voices of absent fathers, while inviting all men to participate by singing lullabies and sharing memories of childhood. A Father’s Lullaby is a “Poetic Cyber Movement for Social Justice,” where art and technology mobilizes a plethora of voices to ignite a more inclusive dialogue to effect social change.

What motivates my artistic practice is my life investment in social justice. I interrogate oppressive systems to give voice to marginalized narratives and personal stories, and to propagate poetic expressions of local and global perspectives.
— Rashin Fahandej

Rashin’s residency with Thoughtworks Arts enabled the project to take on new dimensions in volumetric filmmaking technology, and in the online sharing and mapping of new father’s voices to enter into the community effort.

With support from our residency partner Scatter, Rashin Fahandej incorporated volumetric filmmaking into her practice, using Depthkit technology. Volumetric filmmaking has allowed her to expand and enhance the possibilities for her immersive visual poetry.

Supporting the in-person exhibition experiences is a website where fathers from across the USA upload recordings of their voices. Website visitors can browse and explore the voices via an interactive map, read about the project’s history, and record and upload a lullaby for themselves.