Salzburg honours river art and butterfly material research

Salzburg has awarded five Christian Doppler Prizes, including one for an art project exploring river forms and another for research into a material based on butterfly wings, ORF reported. After a three-year pause, the prizes returned this year, drawing a record more than 50 entries. Each winner receives 5,000 euros.

Students Vanessa Friedl and Daniela Waltl created an exhibition called “Flussform” about the shapes of rivers. Its installation includes a box that lets visitors alter a river’s course, for example by straightening it or creating meanders, and observe how the landscape responds.

The students say river shapes affect both how water flows and what people find beautiful. The exhibition also presents river restoration as valuable for its appearance as well as its ecological benefits. Developed through workshops, “Flussform” is on display until Friday at the Kunstwerk venue at Mozarteum University.

Another prize-winning project developed a new material from the wing of the butterfly Graphium milon. The butterfly has a true blue pigment and also appears to glow. Bodo Wilts, a materials scientist at the University of Salzburg, described its properties and accepted the prize, but the award went to researcher Limin Wang, who has returned to China. The material could potentially be used as a security feature on identity documents or banknotes.