• by Karl Greenberg , July 6, 2011

Infiniti, Nissan Motor's luxury marque, has for several years, aligned its design aesthetic with a Japanese Shodo calligraphy. The brand is extending the idea that automotive ideas come from pure art with a European-market art competition via a partnership with online art magazine Designboom. The program, called Infiniti Digital Art Competition offers the winner both a monetary award, and limelight at an Infiniti-sponsored series of European exhibitions.

The one-year competition will have three entry periods, each of which focuses on one element of the Infiniti brand. For each, participants have to design an interior installation piece and/or digital artwork for a building facade that can be digital installations or sculptures, visual projections on Infiniti's buildings, 3D mapping experiments, or other new media works.

For each theme, a jury comprising design and art pros, ad agencies, and experts will create a shortlist of three exterior creations and three interior installations from three to six artists. Each of those projects will be featured at several Infiniti-branded showroom events in Europe. The events are open to the public, which will choose the winner by online vote. Each opening event will also be streamed live. Each of the three winners will receive a prize of €10,000.

The call for entry says the winning formula "will be clearly linked to Infiniti's DNA," and will express the Inspired Performance theme of the competition. Instructions add that "conceptually or physically, Infiniti cars should be in some way the heroes of the creation." Infiniti says the program is a "research project designed to test the limits of creative possibility."

The automaker is making a library of images and videos available to participants, and is also offering an aesthetic boilerplate meant to evoke the Infiniti "idea," with such brand enucleations as "Infiniti's power has a unique feel. It starts soft and delicately, gradually delivering an increasing quantity of power that gives the acceleration the feel of endlessly increasing G's," and "Infiniti's technology is a discreet presence that provides all the support a driver may need while letting him concentrate exclusively on driving performance, freeing him to be uniquely inspired ... and the same is true for our design. Shiro Nakamura, Infiniti's senior vice president of design, always stays true to his idea that the most beautiful and high-performing design can be achieved through simplicity. 'Everything starts with a single line' is his firm belief."

Infiniti is also telling prospects that "by submitting a design in the competition, the participant agrees to provide Infiniti with the right of first refusal to the exclusive use of the design." The right-of-refusal is for a six-month window, per Infiniti.

Participants have to give Designboom and Infiniti the right to publish and exhibit all the designs (including project data submitted) -- waiving compensation -- at exhibitions and events and/or to use them in any publications communications or promotions.

The jury for Inspired Performance, the first of the three competitions include Adrian Newey, chief technical officer, of Red Bull Racing; Yeoh Gh, creative director, of Shanghai-based Super Nature Design; Birgit Lohmann, co-founder and editor-in-chief, Designboom, and Jean Pierre Diernaz, Infiniti's director of marketing for Europe, the middle east, India, and Africa.