Vida 16 Award for Professor Michael Hurtado

A jury make up of international experts such Honor Harger, José Carlos Mariátegui, Marina MacDougall, Mónica Bello, Nell Tenhaaf, Roger Malina and Laura Fernández Orgaz chose the winners in the three categories of the Vida 16.0 contest: Completed AwardsProduction Incentive Awards, and finally,VIDA Pioneer Award Michael Hurtado, Professor of Art and Technology and project instructor at Universidad de Ingeniería y Tecnología (UTEC) has received the VIDA16 – Production incentive award, for his work entitled Qonqawankimanchu, which takes its name from a poem by the same name authored by Kilku Warak'a, which in Quechua means Would you forget me?Using this as a point of departure, Hurtando proposes a real life solution to a real life problem of the rural population living in the Andean highlands:  health. Michael proposes to design and build a robot that derives its inspiration from the "cuy", or guinea pit, a rodent that is native to these regions which, in addition to being associated with outstanding chapters of the Andean Cosmo-vision, is still used today in traditional folklore medicine to treat injuries and diagnose disease.Qonqawankimanchu will be a robot in the form of a guinea pig, capable of making contact by itself with the rural population to detect their diseases and be able to contribute to an eventual improvement in their quality of life.  The lack of basic healthcare services in these populations is the main focus of concern in this project and the artist wants to contribute to an empowerment of these people through technology. Production Incentive AwardsThis category is geared toward new artistic productions in Spain, Portugal and Latin America, where there are artistic concepts that give technologies a social, cultural and environmental function.What is VIDA 16.0?VIDA 16.0 is an alliance which promotes art, industry and technological innovation.  At this second edition of the Incentive Awards, Telefonica I+D offers the chance to develop your work with the support and cooperation of the Telefonica I+D team in Barcelona in 2015.